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.