84 March Legend of Narcissus. 



cured of it fancying it to be a water-nymph, and 

 others that he could not help looking at it because it 

 reminded him of the sister that he had loved too much 

 and lost. The popular impression seems to be that 

 Narcissus was a beautiful youth who simply admired 

 his own beauty, and gazed upon his form as it was 

 reflected in the smooth water, afterwards becoming a 

 flower on the river's brim, and continuing, as a flower, 

 the habit of self -admiration which he had contracted 

 in his human adolescence. This last interpretation, or 

 simplification, of the old legends, whose details it drops 

 altogether, is still very happily in accordance with the 

 genuine old Greek spirit, the spirit of a time when no 

 possessor of eminent physical beauty could remain un- 

 aware of a gift so much appreciated, but would see it 

 reflected, not only in the waters of the Cephisus or other 

 rivers, but in the admiring eyes of all Greek men and 

 women whenever he appeared in public. In any shape 

 it is peculiarly an artist's legend, having so direct a ref- 

 erence to beauty, so that it has often been illustrated 

 by modern painters and sculptors. We do not feel very 

 grateful to those later classical writers who have been at 

 the pains to inform us that our /caka vdpKicrcros (as The- 

 ocritus called it) has no especial association with beauty, 

 and is not called so after the beautiful youth who was 

 beloved by Echo, but takes its name simply from vdptcr), 

 or, vapKao), with reference to its narcotic properties. Was 

 the flower called vdpKia-cros before the legend existed, 

 and is the legend itself, as Keats imagined, simply the 

 beautiful fancy of some early poet who, ' in some 'deli- 



