I, kneeling by this flower, in good intent, Abode, to know what all the people meant, As still as any stone; till at the last The God of Love on me his eyen cast And said, "Who kneeleth there?" And I answered Unto his asking, And said, "Sir, it am I," and came him near And salued him.--Quoth he, "What dost thou here So nigh mine own flower, so boldly? It were better worthy, truly, A worm to nighen near my flower than thou." "And why, Sir," quoth I, "an it like you?" "For thou," quoth he, "art nothing thereto able, It is my relike, digne, and delitable. And thou my foe, and all my folk worriest. [33] And of mine old servants thou missayest." But it is only for evil speaking of ladies that Chaucer felt his conscience thus pricked,--chiefly of Cressida; whereas, I have written the lines for you because it is the very curse of this age that we speak evil alike of ladies and knights, and all that made them noble in past days;--nay, of saints also; and I have, for first business, next January, to say what I can for our own St. George, against the enlightened modern American view of him, that he was nothing better than a swindling bacon-seller (good enough, indeed, so, for us, now!) But to come back to the house that Jack built. You will want to know, next, whether Jack ever did build it. I believe, in veritable bricks and mortar--no; in veritable limestone and cave-catacomb, perhaps, yes; it is no matter how; somehow, you see, Jack must have built it, for there is the picture of it on the coin of the town. He built it, just as St. George killed the dragon; so that you put a picture of him also on the coin of your town. Not but that the real and artful labyrinth might have been, for all we know. A very real one, indeed, was built by twelve brotherly kings in Egypt, in two stories, one for men to live in, the other for crocodiles;--and the upper story was visible and wonderful to all eyes, in authentic times: whereas, we know of no one who ever saw Jack's labyrinth: and yet, curiously enough, the real labyrinth set the pattern of nothing; while Jack's ghostly labyrinth has set the pattern of almost everything linear and complex, since; and the pretty spectre of it blooms at this hour, in vital hawthorn for you, every spring, at Hampton Court.