So nigh mine own flower, so boldly?
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.[1]
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.