_Spenser_
With respect to the NARCISSUS, whose name in the floral vocabulary is
the synonyme of _egotism_, there is a story that must be familiar enough
to most of my readers. Narcissus was a beautiful youth. Teresias, the
Soothsayer, foretold that he should enjoy felicity until he beheld his
own face but that the first sight of that would be fatal to him. Every
kind of mirror was kept carefully out of his way. Echo was enamoured of
him, but he slighted her love, and she pined and withered away until she
had nothing left her but her voice, and even that could only repeat the
last syllables of other people's sentences. He at last saw his own image
reflected in a fountain, and taking it for that of another, he fell
passionately in love with it. He attempted to embrace it. On seeing the
fruitlessness of all his efforts, he killed himself in despair. When the
nymphs raised a funeral pile to burn his body, they found nothing but a
flower. That flower (into which he had been changed) still bears his
name.
Here is a little passage about the fable, from the _Two Noble Kinsmen_
of Beaumont and Fletcher.
_Emilia_--This garden hath a world of pleasure in it,
What flower is this?
_Servant_--'Tis called Narcissus, Madam.
_Em._--That was a fair boy certain, but a fool
To love himself, were there not maids,
Or are they all hard hearted?
_Ser_--That could not be to one so fair.
Ben Jonson touches the true moral of the fable very forcibly.
'Tis now the known disease
That beauty hath, to hear too deep a sense
Of her own self conceived excellence
Oh! had'st thou known the worth of Heaven's rich gift,
Thou would'st have turned it to a truer use,
And not (with starved and covetous ignorance)
Pined in continual eyeing that bright gem
The glance whereof to others had been more
Than to thy famished mind the wide world's store.
Gay's version of the fable is as follows:
Here young Narcissus o'er the fountain stood
And viewed his image in the crystal flood
The crystal flood reflects his lovely charms
And the pleased image strives to meet his arms.
No nymph his inexperienced breast subdued,
Echo in vain the flying boy pursued
Himself alone, the foolish youth admires
And with fond look the smiling shade desires,
O'er the smooth lake with fruitless tears he grieves,
His spreading fingers shoot in verdant leaves,
Through his pale veins green sap now gently flows,
And in a short lived flower his beauty glows
Addison has given a full translation of the story of Narcissus from
Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book the third.
The common daffodil of our English fields is of the genus Narcissus.
"Pray," said some one to Pope, "what is this _Asphodel_ of Homer?" "Why,
I believe," said Pope "if one was to say the truth, 'twas nothing else
but that poor yellow flower that grows about our orchards, and, if so,
the verse might be thus translated in English
--The stern Achilles
Stalked through a mead of daffodillies"