NARCISSUS. 
65 
Drayton in his Pastorals makes the Daffodil the 
same flower with the Lily : 
See that there be store of lilies, 
(Called by shepherds Daffodillies.) 
The Narcissus major, the largest of this family 
of flowers, a native of Spain, is common in our 
gardens, and rarely seen singly. Its magnificent 
gold-coloured flowers are supported by a stalk nearly 
two feet high. 
A modern poet has taken the Narcissus for an 
emblem of the pains of unrequitted love. Thus, too, 
the ancients, on account of its narcotic properties, 
regarded it as the flower of deceit, which, as Homer 
assures us, delights heaven and earth by its odour 
and external beauty, but, at the same time, produces 
stupor and even death. It was therefore consecrated 
to the Eumenides, Ceres, and Proserpine, on 
which account Sophocles calls it the garland of the 
great goddesses; and Pluto, by the advice of Venus, 
employed it to entice Proserpine to the lower 
world. 
In the East, the Daffodil is a particular favourite. 
The Persians call it, by way of eminence, Zerrin, 
3 * 
