When the six Thracian ladies fall into the power of “thirty bloody-minded satyrs,” who so likely, or so happy to rescue them as jolly St. Patrick. How he flies to the rescue, slays one satyr, puts the rest to flight, and true as steel, in love or friendship, takes the half dozen damsels under his arm, and swings singingly along with them in search of the roving Scot! As for St. David, all this while, he had not been quite so triumphant, or so tried, as his fellows. He had fallen into bad company, and “four beautiful damsels wrapped the drousie champion in a sheet of fine Arabian silk, and conveyed him into a cave, placed in the middle of a garden, where they laid him on a bed, more softer than the down of Culvers.” In this agreeable company the Welsh champion wiled away his seven years. It was pleasant but not proper. But if the author had not thus disposed of him, how do you think he would ever have got back to St. George of England? The author indeed exhibits considerable skill, for he brings St. George and St. David together, and the first rescues the second from ignoble thraldom, and what is worse, from the most prosy enchanter I ever met with in history, and who is really not enchanting at all. This done, George is off to Tripoli.
There, near there, or somewhere else, for the romances are dreadfully careless in their topography, he falls in with his old love Sabra, married to a Moorish King. If George is perplexed at this, seeing that the lady had engaged to remain an unmarried maiden till he came to wed her, he is still more so when she informs him that she has, in all essentials, kept her word, “through the secret virtue of a golden chain steeped in tiger’s blood, the which she wore seven times double about her ivory neck.” St. George does not know what to make of it, but as on subsequently encountering two lions, Sabra, while he was despatching one, kept the other quietly with its head resting on her lap, the knight declared himself perfectly satisfied, and they set out upon their travels, lovingly together.
By the luckiest chance, all the wandering knights and their ladies met at the court of a King of Greece, who is not, certainly, to be heard of in Gillies’ or Goldsmith’s history. The scenery is now on a magnificent scale, for there is a regal wedding on foot, and tournaments, and the real war of Heathenism against all Christendom. As the Champions of Christendom have as yet done little to warrant them in assuming the appellation, one would suppose that the time had now arrived when they were to give the world a taste of their quality in that respect. But nothing of the sort occurs. The seven worthies separate, each to his own country, in order to prepare for great deeds; but none are done for the benefit of Christianity, unless indeed we are to conclude that when George and Sabra travelled together, and he overcame all antagonists, and she inspired with love all beholders;—he subdued nature itself and she ran continually into danger, from which he rescued her:—and that when, after being condemned to the stake, the young wife gave birth to three babes in the wood, and was at last crowned Queen of Egypt, something is meant by way of allegory, in reference to old church questions, and in not very clear elucidation as to how these questions were beneficially affected by the Champions of Christendom!
I may add that when Sabra was crowned Queen of Egypt, every one was ordered to be merry, on pain of death! It is further to be observed there is now much confusion, and that the confusion by no means grows less as the story thunders on. The Champions and the three sons of St. George are, by turns, East, West, North, and South, either pursuing each other, or suddenly and unexpectedly encountering, like the principal personages in a pantomime. Battles, love-making, and shutting up cruel and reprobate magicians from the “humane eye,” are the chief events, but to every event there are dozens of episodes, and each episode is as confusing, dazzling, and bewildering as the trunk from which it hangs.
St. George, however, is like a greater champion than himself; and when he is idle and in Italy, he does precisely what Nelson did in the same place—fall in love with a lady, and cause endless mischief in consequence. By this time, however, Johnson begins to think, rightly, that his readers have had enough of it, and that it is time to dispose of his principal characters. These too, are so well disposed to help him, that when the author kills St. Patrick, the saint burys himself! In memory of his deeds, of which we have heard little or nothing, some are accustomed to honor him, says Mr. Johnson—“wearing upon their hats, each of them, a cross of red silk, in token of his many adventures under the Christian Cross.” So that the shamrock appears to have been a device only of later times.
St. David is as quickly despatched. This champion enters Wales to crush the pagans there. He wears a leek in his helmet, and his followers adopt the same fashion, in order that friend may be distinguished from foe. The doughty saint, of course, comes conqueror out of the battle, but he is in a heated state, gets a chill and dies after all of a common cold. Bruce, returning safe from exploring the Nile, to break his neck by falling down his own stairs, hardly presents a more practical bathos than this. Why the leek became the badge of Welshmen need not be further explained.
It is singular that in recounting the manner of the death of the next champion, St. Denis, the romancer is less romantic than common tradition. He tells us how the knight repaired to then pagan France; how he was accused of being a Christian, by another knight of what we should fancy a Christian order, St. Michael, and how the pagan king orders St. Denis to be beheaded, in consequence. There are wonders in the heavens, at this execution, which convert the heathen sovereign to Christianity; but no mention is made of St. Denis having walked to a monastery, after his head was off, and with his head under his arm. Of this prodigy Voltaire remarked, “Ce n’est que le premier pas qui coute,” but of that the romancer makes no mention. St. James suffers by being shut up in his chapel in Spain, and starved to death, by order of the Atheist king. Anthony dies quietly in a good old age, in Italy; St. Andrew is beheaded by the cruel pagan Scots whom, in his old age, he had visited, in order to bring them to conversion: and St. George, who goes on, riding down wild monsters and rescuing timid maidens, to the last—and his inclination, was always in the direction of the maidens—ultimately meets his death by the sting of a venomous dragon.
And now it would seem that two or three hundred years ago, authors were very much like the actors in the Critic, who when they did get hold of a good thing, could never give the public enough of it. Accordingly, the biography of the Seven Champions was followed by that of their sons. I will spare my readers the turbulent details: they will probably be satisfied with learning that the three sons of St. George became kings, “according as the fairy queen had prophesied to them,” and that Sir Turpin, son of David, Sir Pedro, son of James, Sir Orlando, son of Anthony, Sir Ewen, son of Andrew, Sir Phelim, son of Patrick, and Sir Owen, son of David, like their sires, combated with giants, monsters, and dragons; tilted and tournamented in honor of the ladies, did battle in defence of Christianity, relieved the distressed, annihilated necromancers and table-turners, in short, accomplished all that could be expected from knights of such prowess and chivalry.
When Richard Johnson had reached this part of his history, he gave it to the world, awaiting the judgment of the critics, before he published his second portion: that portion wherein he was to unfold what nobody yet could guess at, namely, wherefore the Seven Champions were called par excellence, the Champions of Christendom. I am afraid that meanwhile those terrible, god-like, and inexorable critics, had not dealt altogether gently with him. The Punch they offered him was not made exclusively of sweets. His St. George had been attacked, and very small reverence been expressed for his ladies. But see how calmly and courteously—all the more admirable that there must have been some affectation in the matter—he turns from the censuring judges to that benevolent personage, the gentle reader. “Thy courtesy,” he says, “must be my buckler against the carping malice of mocking jesters, that being worse able to do well, scoff commonly at that they can not mend; censuring all things, doing nothing, but (monkey-like) make apish jests at anything they do in print, and nothing pleaseth them, except it savor of a scoffing and invective spirit. Well, what they say of me I do not care; thy delight is my sole desire.” Well said, bold Richard Johnson. He thought he had put down criticism as St. George had the dragon.
I can not say, however, that good Richard Johnson treats his gentle reader fairly. This second part of his Champions is to a reader worse than what all the labors of Hercules were to the lusty son of Alcmena. An historical drama at Astley’s is not half so bewildering, and is almost as credible, and Mr. Ducrow himself when he was rehearsing his celebrated “spectacle drama” of “St. George and the Dragon” at old Drury—and who that ever saw him on those occasions can possibly forget him?—achieved greater feats, or was more utterly unlike any sane individual than St. George is, as put upon the literary stage by Master Johnson.