The only case in which this method breaks down is that in which the goal is situated anywhere within a loop. Where this occurs the explorer adopting the method described will discover the fact by finding himself eventually back at the starting-point without having visited the goal. He must then adopt different tactics, but unless it is practicable to use a clue or a system of marks like that detailed above there is no rule that will help him. One may, of course, thread the maze by remembering a formula of some sort applicable to that particular maze, _e.g._, in the case of Hampton Court, "Left, right, right, left, left, left, left," but this is equivalent to having a plan of the maze. Such mnemonics, unless perfectly retained, are apt to prove more of a nuisance than a help. Can anybody who has once yielded to the exuberant mirth of "Three Men in a Boat" forget the predicament of the over-confident Harris when he volunteered to conduct a party, strangers as well, through the Hampton Court maze? "We'll just go in here," he said, "so that you can say you've been, but it's very simple. It's absurd to call it a maze. You keep on taking the first turning to the right. We'll just walk round for ten minutes and then go and get some lunch." Poor Harris! CHAPTER XXII THE LABYRINTH IN LITERATURE The romantic and mysterious flavour of the words "maze" and "labyrinth" has induced many a writer of fiction to adopt one or the other as the theme of a story, or as the setting of some of the action in a story, or else to use the name as an attractive symbolical title for a work. We have several times already had occasion to refer to instances of this kind in the course of our survey, but the reader may have sufficient patience to support the enumeration of a few more, not by any means exhaustive, examples. In most cases where the words are used in book-titles it is perhaps the allegorical rather than the romantic element which is in requisition, though truly the two are never far apart. The Spanish poet Juan de Mena, in the fifteenth century, was inspired by Dante's "Divina Commedia" to compose a ponderous allegorical poem which he named "El Laberinto." This was published in Seville in 1496 and was a queer mixture of theology, astrology, and universal history. In it the poet is shown as being guided by a beautiful woman, symbolising Divine Providence, through three vast concentric circular regions, representing respectively the past, the present, and the future. These are somehow involved with the seven planets, after which the seven divisions of the poem are named. No doubt there were at that time many folk to whom such a work made a strong appeal, but it was evidently not the kind of book that we should nowadays choose to take away for a holiday.