Narcissus, Fashion and Flattery

Author: Adams, Thomas, fl. 1612-1653.
Title: The deuills banket described in foure sermons [brace], 1. The banket propounded, begunne, 2. The second seruice, 3. The breaking vp of the feast, 4. The shot or reckoning, [and] The sinners passing-bell, together with Phisicke from heauen / published by Thomas Adams ...
Date: 1614

6. The last Viall of this Course is FLATTERIE, a water taken out of  NARCISSUS Well; whereof, when great men drinke plentfully, they grow madde in their owne ad|miration: and when Selfe-loue hath once befool'd the braines, the Deuill himselfe would not wish the traine of consequent sinnes longer. This is a terrible enchantment, that robs men with delight: that counts simplicity a silly thing, and will sweare to a falshood to please a Foelix. This man out-runnes the Deuill: he is the Father of lyes, yet we neuer read, that he swore to a lye: for he that sweares, acknowledgeth the Being that he sweares by, greater then himselfe; which the Deuill scornes to doe. The Flatterer in auouching a lye, and swearing to it, hath a tricke beyond the Deuill. The superlatiue titles of these men, cause others to o|uer-value themselues. Pride deriues her encourage|ment from the Flatterers artificiall commendations. Thou art farre in debt, and fearest arrests; hee that should come and tell thee, thou art rich, able to pur|chase, swimmest in a full and flowing streame, thou giuest no credite to him, though hee would giue too much credite to thee. Thy soules state is more beg|garly, broken, bankerout of grace, and runne in arre|rages with God, yet the Flatterer praiseth the riches of thy vertues, and thou beleeuest him. It is a fearefull and fanaticall blindnesse for a man to carie his eyes in a boxe, like Plutarches lamiae, and onely looke into himselfe by the eyes of his Parasites: as if he desired to reade the Catalogue of his owne good parts, through the spectacles of Flatterie; which makes the least letter of a great shew, and sometimes a Cipher to be mista|ken for a FIGURE. The Sycophants language is a false glasse, and represents thy conscience white, when thou mayst change beautie with the MOORE; and loose not by the bargaine. Let Herode be as hollow as a kexe, and as light as Ayre, yet weighed in his Parasites ballance, hee shall poyse with solid Vertue, nay, with God him|selfe.

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THE English Gentleman: Containing Sundry excellent Rules or exquisite Observations, tending to Direction of every Gentleman, of selecter ranke and qualitie; How to demeane or accommodate himselfe in the manage of publike or private affaires.

By RICHARD BRATHWAIT Esq.

SENECA in Herc. furen.

---Qui genus jactat suum
Aliena laudat.

LONDON, Printed by Iohn Haviland, and are to be sold by ROBERT BOSTOCK at his shop at the signe of the Kings head in Pauls Church-yard. 1630.

TO THE NOBLY ACCOMPLISHED, honoured, and loved; THOMAS Viscount WENTVVORTH, Lord Pre|sident of Yorke; all correspondence to his prudent'st and prepa|red'st resolves.

Worthyly Honoured,

VErtue the greatest Signall and Symbol of Gentry: is rather expressed by goodnesse of Person, than greatnesse of Place. For, howsoever the bleere|ey'd vulgar honour, the purple more than the person, descent more than desert, title than merit: that adulterate Gentility, which de|generats from the worth of her Ancestors,

derogates likewise from the birth of her Ancestors. And these be such, whose in|fant effeminacie, youthfull delicacie, or na|tive libertie hath estranged them from the knowledge of morall or divine mysteries: so as, they may be well compared to the Ostrich, who (as the Naturall Historian reports) hath the wings of an Eagle, but never mounts: so these have the Eagle-wings of contemplation, being indued with he intellectuall faculties of a reasonable soule; yet either intangled with the light chesses of vanity, or trashed with the hea|vie poizes of selfe-conceit and singularitie, they never mount above the verge of sensuall pleasure. But I am here to tender un|to your Honours judicious view, a Gentle|man, quite of another garbe: One, whose Education hath made formall enough, with|out apish formalitie, and conceiving enough, without selfe-admiring arrogancie.

 (SNIP)

But thou objectest; How should I expresse my descent, my place; or how seeme worthy the company of eminent persons, with whom I consort, if I should sleight or disvalue this general-affected vanity Fashion? I will tell thee: thou canst not more generously, I will not say generally, expresse thy greatnes of descent, place, or qualitie, nor seeme better worthy the company with whom thou consortest or frequentest, than by erecting the glorious beames of thy minde, aboue these inferiour things. For who are these with whom thou consortest? meere triflers away of time, bastard slips, degenerate impes, consumers of their patrimonie, and in the end, (for what other end save misery may attend them) Haires to shame and infamie. These (I say) who offer their Morning-prayers to the Glasse, eying themselves till  Narcissus-like they fall in love with their owne shadowes. O England, what a height of pride art thou growne to? yea, how much art thou growne unlike thy selfe? when, disvaluing thy owne forme, thou deformest thy selfe by borrowing a plume of everie Countrey, to display thy pie-coloured flag of vani|tie. What painting, purfling, powdring and pargeting doe you use, (yee Idolls of vanitie) to lure and allure men to breake their first faith, forsake their first love, and yeeld to your immodestie? How can you weepe for your sinnes, (saith Saint Hierome) when your teares will make furrowes in your face? With what confi|dence do you lift up that countenance to heaven, which your Maker acknowledges not? Doe not say that you have modest mindes, when you have immodest eyes. Death hath entred in at your windowes; your eyes are those cranies, those hatefull portells, those fatall en|trances,

which (Tarpeia-like) by betraying the glori|ous fortresse or cittadell of your soules, have given easie way to your mortall enemie. Vtinam miserrimus ego &c. I would I poore wretch (saith Tertullian) might see in that day of Christian exaltation, An cum cerussa, & purpurisso & croco, & cum illo ambitu capitis resurga|tis: No, you stanes to modestie, such a Picture shall not rise in glory before her Maker. There is no place for you; but for such women as array themselves in come|ly apparell, with shamefastnesse and modestie, not with broi|ded haire, or gold, or pearles, or costly apparell. But, as becommeth women that professe the feare of God. For even after this manner in time past did the holy women, which trusted in God, tire themselves. Reade, I say, reade yee proud ones, yee which are so haughtie, and walke with stretched-out neckes, the Prophet Isaiah, and you shall find your selves described, and the judge|ment of Desolation pronounced upon you. Becase the Daughters of Zion are haughtie, and walk with stre|ched-out neckes, and with wandring eyes, walking minsing as they goe, and making a tinckling with the[...] feet; therfore shall the Lord make the heads of the daugh|ters of Zion bald, and the Lord shall discover their secret parts. And he proceeds: In that day shall the Lord take away the ornament of the slippers, and the calles, and the round tyres. The sweet balles, and the bracelets, and the bonnets. The tyres of the head, and the sloppes, and the head-bands, and the tablets, and the eare-rings. The rings and the mufflers. The costly apparell and the gailes, and the wimples, and the crisping-pins. And the glasses, and the fine linnen, and the hoods and the launes. Now heare your reward: And in stead of sweet savour, there shall be stinke, and in stead of a girdle, a rent, and in stead of dressing of the haire, baldnesse, and in stead of a stomacher, a girding of sack-cloth, and burning in stead of beautie. Now attend your finall destruction: Thy men shall fall

by the sword, and thy strength in the battell. Then shall her gates mourne and lament, and shee being desolate shall sit upon the ground. See how you are described, and how you shall be rewarded. Enjoy then sin for a season, and delight your selves in the vanities of Youth: be your eyes the Lures of Lust, your eares the open receits of shame, your hands the polluted instruments of sinne: to be short, be your Soules, which should be the Temples of the Holy Ghost, cages of uncleane birds; after all these things, what the Prophet hath threatned shal come up|on you, and what shall then deliver you? not your Beau|tie· for to use that divine Distich of Innocentius,

Tell me thou earthen vessell made of clay,

What's Beautie worth, when thou must die to day?

Nor Honour; for that shall lye in the dust, and sleepe in the bed of earth. Nor Riches; for they shall not deliver in the day of wrath. Perchance they may bring you, when you are dead, in a comely funerall sort to your graves, or bestow on you a few mourning gar|ments or erect in your memory some gorgeous Mo|nument, to shew your vain-glory in death, as well as life; but this is all: Those Riches which you got with such care, kept with such feare, lost with such griefe, shall not afford you one comfortable hope in the houre of your passage hence; afflict they may, re|leeve they cannot. Nor Friends; for all they can doe, is to attend you, and shed some friendly teares for you; but ere the Rosemary lose her colour, which stickt the Coarse, or one worme enter the shroud, which co|vered the Corpse, you are many times forgotten, your former glory extinguished, your eminent esteeme ob|scured, your repute darkened, and with infamous as|persions often impeached.

The Metamorphosis of Oxford

England's Narcissus - How the Earl of Oxford was metamorphosed into a flower/figure.

In his 1616 Folio edition of Cynthia's Revels Ben Jonson identified the Italianate gentleman Signior Amorphus as the Earl of Oxford.

The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 23 May 1601, with the title Narcissus the Fountain of Self-Love. It was published in quarto later that year by the bookseller Walter Burre under the title The Fountain of Self-Love, or Cynthia's Revels.

“O for Hermes’ wand

To touch this flower into human shape!  - Keats, Endymion

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Alciato's Book of Emblems
Emblem 69
Self-love
Because your figure pleased you too much, Narcissus, [or - because your beauty (forma) was excessively pleasing to you] it was changed
into a flower, a plant of known senselessness (stupor). Self-love is the
WITHERING (marcor) and destruction of natural power (ingenium) which brings and has
brought ruin to many learned men, who having thrown away the method of
the ancients seek new doctrines and pass on nothing but their own
fantasies (phantasia).

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Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount-from Cynthia's Revels

By Ben Jonson

Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears;

Yet slower, yet, O faintly, gentle springs!

List to the heavy part the music bears,

Woe weeps out her division, when she sings.

Droop herbs and flowers;

Fall grief in showers;

Our beauties are not ours.

O, I could still,

Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,

Drop, drop, drop, drop,

Since nature’s pride is now a withered daffodil.

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Narcissism and Suicide in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries

Eric Langley

...Revisioned as an advice book, the Metamorphoses becomes part of the speculum text tradition, readable as a sequence of emblems or exemplary mirrors. Geffrey Whitney’s Choice of Emblemes includes verses that, displaying their debt to the translators’ additions, demonstrate how Ovid’s text becomes something akin to a source book for morality figures, a vice figure lexicon: Whitney is quoting Golding when he describes how ‘[t]he riche, the pore, the learned, and the sotte’ all ‘[o]ffende therein: and yet thy see it not’. Again, the latent moral of the Ovidian tale is clarified and systematized for its Renaissance audience, just as the ‘secret sore’ of self-love that ‘lies hidden from our eyes’ within the individual is revealed until ‘plainlie see[n]’ and safelie visible. Finally, by the mid-sixteenth century, Narcissus becomes almost exclusively a cautionary figure, employed as a warning for vain courtiers and those susceptible to flattery, or as chastisement to those unsusceptible to the charms of the courting poet. Narcisssus, accordingly, often appears in briedf verses dedicated ‘To a Lady wearing a Looking-glass at her girdle’ or ‘To his Mistresse…being at her Looking-glasse’. The paradox – and Narcissus is a figure for whom paradox is peculiarly apposite – is complet’ warning the reader against looking in the mirror, these texts demand we read them as mirrors. A mirror condemns a mirror:

I would have them to behold themselves in this glasse’ not doubting, but that as Narcissus, viewing himself in that pure cleare Fountaine, wherein he saw his own most beautifull Image, dyded overcome with…selfe-love’ so these men will either die, or their vices in them, through…hate of themselves.

Narcissus therefore acts as cautionary metonym for the broader speculum tradition as categorized by Herbert Graves, enlisted to make clear otherwise worryingly blurred distinctions between the Socratic mirror of self-knowledge and the vain mirror of self-idolatry. Discussing the Delphic injunction carved into the stone of Apollo’s temple (‘know theyself’), Socrates explains to Alcibiades that it should be understood as ‘see thyself’; ‘the eye [should] be looking at something in which it could see itself’, he continues, suggesting either a mirror or the reflective surface of the beloved’s eye (‘then will an eye see itself if it observes and eye’).

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 Ovid - Adstupet

stupeō uī, ēre STIP-, to be struck senseless, be stunned, be benumbed, be aghast, be astounded, be amazed, be stupefied: animus stupet, T.: cum hic semisomnus stuperet: exspectatione, L.: aere, H.: in titulis, H.: in Turno, V.: ad auditas voces, O.: stupet Inter se coiisse viros, V.: Pars stupet donum Minervae, are lost in wonder at, V.

—To be benumbed, be stiffened, be silenced, hesitate, stop: stupuitque Ixionis orbis, O.: stupente ita seditione, L.: stupuerunt verba palato, O.

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin stupor (“insensibility, numbness, dullness”), from stupeō (“I am stunned, I am numb”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)tewp-. Distantly related (from Proto-Indo-European, via Proto-Germanic) to stint, stub, and steep.

stupor (plural stupors)

1. A state of reduced consciousness or sensibility.
2. A state in which one has difficulty in thinking or using one’s senses.

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 Shakespeare:

SONNET 62

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,
And all my soul and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
   'Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
   Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

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Upon Ben: Johnson, the most excellent of Comick Poets.

Mirror of Poets! Mirror of our Age!
Which her whole Face beholding on thy stage,
Pleas'd and displeas'd with her owne faults endures,
A remedy, like Those whom Musicke cures,
Thou not alone those various inclinations,
Which Nature gives to Ages, Sexes, Nations,
Hast traced with thy All-resembling Pen,
But all that custome hath impos'd on Men,
Or ill-got Habits, which distort them so,
That scarce the Brother can the Brother know,
Is represented to the wondring Eyes,
Of all that see or read thy Comedies.
Whoever in those Glasses lookes may finde,
The spots return'd, or graces of his minde;
And by the helpe of so divine an Art,
At leisure view, and dresse his nobler part.

NARCISSUS conzen'd by that flattering Well,
Which nothing could but of his beauty tell,
Had here discovering the DEFORM'D estate
Of his fond minde, preserv'd himselfe with hate,
But Vertue too, as well as Vice is clad,
In flesh and blood so well, that Plato had
Beheld what his high Fancie once embrac'd,
Vertue with colour, speech and motion grac'd.
The sundry Postures of Thy copious Muse,
Who would expresse a thousand tongues must use,
Whose Fates no lesse peculiar then thy Art,
For as thou couldst all characters impart,
So none can render thine, who still escapes,
Like Proteus in variety of shapes,
Who was nor this nor that, but all we finde,
And all we can imagine in mankind.

E. Waller

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John Beaumont , Jonsonus Virbius

...Twas he that found (plac'd) in the seat of wit,
DULL grinning IGNORANCE, and banish'd it;
He on the prostituted stage appears
To make men hear, not by their eyes, but ears;
Who painted virtues, that each one might know,
And point the man, that did such treasure owe :
So that who could in JONSON'S lines be high
Needed not honours, or a riband buy ;
But VICE he only shewed us in a GLASS,
Which by reflection of those rays that pass,
Retains the figure lively, set before,
And that withdrawn, reflects at us no more;
So, he observ'd the like DECORUM, when
*He whipt the vices, and yet spar'd the men* :
When heretofore, the Vice's only note,
And sign from virtue was his party-coat;
When devils were the last men on the stage,
And pray'd for plenty, and the present age.

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Narcissism and Suicide in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries

Eric Langley

Since that first translation of T.H. in 1560, Narcissus’ tale is accompanied by the advice that through its careful consideration we ‘maye be learned how to perceiver/synne to abhore [and ]virtue to use’. T.H. explains, in his ‘Moralization of the Fable’, how ‘I meane to shewe, according to my wytte/That Ovyd by this tale no folllye mente/But soughte to shewe, the doynges far unfytte/Of soundrye folke’ (ll.15-21); his conclusion is simply that Ovid ‘by Narcissus warnith us to be ware/Of the mishap, that PRIDE doth still repare’ (ll. 174-5). Any potentially ambivalent message, any sense that a Narcissus narrative may in fact be charged by an admittedly precarious and ultimately subsumed self-celebratory individualism, is masked by unconditional warnings for the reader ‘who dothe covet him selfe of wiser skole’ and doth [therefore] prove him selfe a fole’ (ll. 572-4). The Narcissus of these texts’ semi-apologetic authorial commentaries is ‘rash and ignorant’, ‘infected with that poison’, ‘transported with self-love’, ‘intoxicated with self admiration’, and,  for Golding, ‘of scornfulnesse and pryde a mirror cleere’.

Concocting a social critique from the episode, Sandys explains how those who ‘sequester themselves from publique converse and civill affaires’ and surround themselves only with those who ‘applaud and admire them, assenting to what they say, like as many Ecchoes’, become ‘depraved, puft up with uncessant flattery’. Here, Sandys is echoing Francis Bacon’s description of Narcissus, almost word for word; both Bacon and Sandy’s even allegorize the moment of metamorphosis, suggesting that the self-admirer contracts ‘a wonderful sloth, as stupefies their sences, and deprives them of all their vigour and alacritie’, until ‘Narcissus is therefore converted to a flower of his name, which signifies stupid’.

‘Neither is it impertinent that this Flower is said to be consecrated to the infernal Deities’, concludes Bacon, adding, in the vein of Shakespeare’s early sonnets; ‘because Men of this disposition become unprofitable to all humane things: For whatsoever produceth no Fruit of it self, but passeth, and vanisheth as if it had never been, (like the way of a Ship in the Sea, ) that the Ancients were wont to dedicate to the Ghosts, and Powers below.’  While these social allegories certainly fit the Ovidian narrative, Bacon and Sandys have converted a tale that in its original form acknowledge the guilty thrill of a proffered individualism to something merely prohibitive; the alluring quality of Ovid’s undisturbed virginal pool and the comforting fiction of potential self-affirmation are absent from Sandy’s commentary as moral arbitrator: ‘which signifies stupid’.

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Signifying Stupid:

Gainsborough ‘Damn the original picture [Droeshout Engraving]…I think a stupider face I never beheld.’

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ALL FOOLS Chapman

And what is beauty? a meer Quintessence,
Whose life is not in being , but in seeming:
And therefore is not to all eyes the same
But like a cozening picture which one way
shows like a Crow, another like a Swan.

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 Cynthia's Revels, Jonson

Amorphus:

 ...For, let your Soul be as-
sur'd of this (in any rank, or profession whatever) the
more general, or major part of Opinion goes with the
Face, and (simply) respects nothing else. Therefore,
if that can be made exactly, curiously, exquisitely,
thorowly, it is enough:

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Narcissus and the Invention of Personal History

By Kenneth J. Knoespel

Deception At Pool

Although Narcissus appears attracted to the pool because he is tired from hunting, there is a more profound affinity between the person and the place. As he approaches the pool, Ovid tells us, he is drawn to the water and the appearance of the place: ‘faciemque loci fontemque secutus,”. Here the use of FACIES not only denotes appearance but hints at the face he is about to discover. As the water quenches his physical thirst it carries into his body an even more intense desire.

[While he tries to quench his thirst another thirst rises within him, and while he drinks he is overwhelmed by the form he sees. He loves an unsubstantial hope and believes that a body which is only water.]

Narcissus quite literally drinks from the image before him and is poisoned. Hearing his own voice return  from the woods, he is described as someone deceptus imagine vocis. Here, visae conreptus imagine formae, does more than recall and amplify the earlier line. He is no longer simply deceived but seized by a reflection on the water’s surface or a shadow which in Latin is associated with death. Here Ovid probably alluded to the mythological association of the narcissus flower with Persephone. There is no extended comparison, however. Ovid was attracted to  the settings of such Greek stories for their potential in depicting subtle mental changes, not their ritual meaning.

Gradually the evolving narrative intensifies the confusion within Narcissus. Earlier when he was deceived  by the rebounding image of his voice, Ovid described him as astonished, stupet. Now after he is seized by his reflection, Ovid emphasized his astonishment with a word of his own invention, adstupet. The addition of the preposition ad (meaning toward or near to) intensifies the meaning of stupere and indicates even more active involvement. His experience renders him senseless and he appears suspended as it he were a beautiful marble statue. By comparing Narcissus to a statue, Ovid at once remind us of Narcissus’ remarkable beauty and his numbness. The comparison also depicts Narcissus’ growing alienation from himself because as he looks into the water he becomes a spectator viewing his own image as an abstracted form.

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Jonson, Cynthia's Revels


Amorphus. That's good, but how Pythagorical?
Phi. I, Amorphus. Why Pythagorical Breeches?
Amo. O most kindly of all, 'tis a conceit of that fortune,
I am bold to hug my Brain for.
Pha. How is't, exquisite Amorphus?
Amo. O, I am rapt with it, 'tis so fit, so proper,
so happy. --
Phi. Nay do not rack us thus?
Amo. <>. Give me
your Ears. Breeches Pythagorical, by reason of their trans-
migration into several shapes.
Mor. Most rare, in sweet troth.

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Henry Reynolds

Obseruation vpon the Tale of Narcissus

...This Ecco descending vpon a Narcissus, or such a Soule as (impurely and vitiously affected) slights, and stops his eares to the Diuine voice, or shutts his harte from  diuine Inspirations, through his being enamour'd of not himselfe, but his owne shadow meerely, and (buried in the ordures of the Sence) followes corporall shadowes, and flyes the light and purity of Intellectuall Beauty, he becoms thence (being dispoyled, (as the great Iamblicus speakes) of his propper, natiue, and celestiall vertue, and ability,) an earthy, weake, worthlesse thing, and fit sacrifize for only eternall obliuion, and the dij inferi; to whom the Auncients (as is before noted) be|queathed and dedicated this their lazy, stupid, and for-euer-famelesse Narcissus.

FINIS.

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 Cartwright, Son of Ben

Cartwright, William, Jonsonus Virbius

...Blest life of Authors, unto whom we owe
Those that we have, and those that we want too:
Th'art all so good, that reading makes thee worse,
And to have writ so well's thine onely curse.
Secure then of thy merit, thou didst hate
That servile base dependance upon fate:
Successe thou ne'r thoughtst vertue, nor that fit,
Which chance, and th'ages fashion did make hit;
*Excluding those from life in after-time*,
Who into Po'try first brought luck and rime:
Who thought the peoples breath good ayre: sty'ld name
What was but noise; and getting Briefes for fame
Gathered the many's suffrages, and thence
Made COMMENDATION a BENEVOLENCE:
THY thoughts were their owne Lawrell, and did win
That best applause of being crown'd within..  

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O for Hermes' wand
To touch this flower into human shape!


Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water. 24 February 1821 - Keats

For-Ever-Famelesse Oxford

 Oxford/Amorphus/England's Narcissus:

Henry Reynolds

Obseruation vpon the Tale of Narcissus.

As not the least of the Fables of the Auncients but had their meanings, and most of them diuerse mea|nings also, so no lesse hath this of Narcissus, which Ouid hath smoothely sung, and I paraphrastically Englisht after my owne way, and for my owne pleasure. Wherein I am not vnwilling to render (withall) what, as I am taught a little by my owne Genius, and more by better vnderstandings then my own, the Fable was by the first deuizers therof made to meane. And first, for the Geographick parte; the Sence thereof is (I conceiue) obuious enough: The Tale tells vs, the god Cephissus, a great Riuer in Boeotia, that running through the ager Atticus or Attick field (as the place was aunciently called meetes, and mingles his streames with the Water-nymphe Liriope, a narrow brooke so named; and hauing be|tweene them compassed a flat low ground almost Iland-wise, before their falling together into the Phale|rick gulphe, they were fitly called the Parents of this Narcissus or Daffadill, beeing a floure which, (besides the specificall nature it hath to grow, and thriue best in waterish places,) the medowy groundes those waters encompassed, did chiefely yeeld and abound in. This Narcissus is fai|ned to eschew and flye the compa|nie of all women, no lesse then of the Nymphe Ecco that is enamour'd and doates vpon him; denoting by this auuersion of his, the nature of the floure that beares his name; for the daffadill or water-lilly, the seedes thereof especially (as the applyers of them in medcine haue obserued) do powerfully extinguish the ability and desire of carnall copulation, by ouercooling of the Animall seed; no lesse then does Porcelane, Lettuce, Agnus castus, Calamint, White vio|letts, and the like of that kinde. From this his before mencioned quality, and the ill effect it workes in mans body, his name Narcissus (which is torpedo, languor, segnities-slothe, stupi|ditie, lazinesse) was by the Anncients not vnfitly giuen to this vegitable. And they out of this consideration likewise faigned that Preserpine, when Pluto rauished her away as she was gathering floures, had her lap full of Narcissusses; because lazy & vnbusied women are most subject vnto such inconueniences. And because slothfull, vnactiue, and vnindustrious mindes are for the most parte vn|capable of producing any permanent, substantiall or reall effects or frute in any kinde, this fraile flowre therefore (the symbole of such like imperfect and dificient inclinations,) was among the number of lost, dead, and soone-to-be-forgotten things, by those Auncient inuestigators of Natures trueths, particularly dedicated to their Infernall gods. The Morall expounders of this Fable will haue it meane thus,-Ecco, or Fame, (a faire voice) loues and wooes Narcissus, or Philautia; but the selfe-louing man, enamor'd (like this Narcissus) only on himselfe, and blinde to all pleasures but those of the Sence, despises and slightes the more to be imbraced happinesse of a lasting renowne, and memory; and therefore dying, his fame, and all of him dyes with him, and he becomes only-charus dis inferis. A much higher and nobler meaning then any of these before deliuered, is by excellent Authors giuen to this Fable: wherein we must know, that as all the first wise Auncients in generall, vnder characters, figures, and simboles of things, layd downe the precepts of their wisdome to Posterity, so in particular did Pythagoras, who (as the most autentick Iamblicus the Caldaean tells vs) deliuered also the most parte of his doctrines in figuratiue, tipick, and symbolick Notions: among which, one of his documents is this-While the winds breathe, adore Ecco. This Winde is (as the before-mencioned Iamblicus, by consent of his other fellow-Cabalists sayes) the Symbole of the Breath of God; and Ecco, the Reflection of this diuine breath, or Spirit vpon vs; or (as they interpret it) -the daughter of the diuine voice; which through the beatifying splendor it shedds & diffuses through the Soule, is justly worthy to be reuerenced and adored by vs. This Ecco descending vpon a Narcissus, or such a Soule as (impurely and vitiously affected) slights, and stops his eares to the Diuine voice, or shutts his harte from  diuine Inspirations, through his being enamour'd of not himselfe, but his owne shadow meerely, d (buried in the ordures of the Sence) followes corporall shadowes, and flyes the light and purity of Intellectuall Beauty, he becoms thence (being dispoyled, (as the great Iamblicus speakes) of his propper, natiue, and celestiall vertue, and ability,) an earthy, weake, worthlesse thing, and fit sacrifize for only eternall obliuion, and the dij inferi; to whom the Auncients (as is before noted) be|queathed and dedicated this their lazy, stupid, and for-euer-famelesse Narcissus.

FINIS.

 (with thanks)

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 King Hamlet's Ghost: 

I find thee apt,

And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed

That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,

Wouldst thou not stir in this.

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…all the art of rhetorick, besides order and clearness, all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions. And thereby mislead the judgement…eloquence, like the fair sex, has too prevailing beauties in it to suffer itself ever to be spoken against. And it is vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving wherein men find pleasure to be deceived. (John Locke, The Abuse of Words)

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John Oldham on Ben Jonson

…Plain Humor, shewn with her whole various Face,
Not mask'd with any antick Dress,
Nor screw'd in forc'd, ridiculous Grimace
(The gaping Rabbles dull delight,
And more the Actor's than the Poet's Wit)
Such did she enter on thy Stage,
And such was represented to the wond'ring Age:
Well wast thou skill'd, and read in human kind,
In every wild fantastick Passion of his mind,
Didst into all his hidden Inclinations dive,
What each from Nature does receive,
Or Age, or Sex, or Quality, or Country give;
What Custom too, that mighty Sorceress,
Whose pow'rful Witchcraft does transform
Enchanted Man to several monstrous Images,
Makes this an odd, and freakish Monky turn,
And that a grave and solemn Ass appear,
And all a thousand beastly shapes of Folly wear:
Whate're Caprice or Whimsie leads awry
Perverted, and seduc'd Mortality,
Or does incline, and byass it
From what's Discreet, and Wise, and Right, and Good, and Fit;
All in thy faithful Glass were so express'd,
As if they were Reflections of thy Breast,
As if they had been stamp'd on thy own mind,
And thou the universal vast Idea of Mankind.

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Beware then thou render Mens Figures truly, and teach them no less to hate their Deformities, than to love their Forms -- Jonson, _Narcissus the Fountain of Self-Love_ or _Cynthia's Revels_

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Ben Jonson

Cynthia's Revels, Jonson

MERCURY. 

Go, Dors, and you, my madam COURTING-STOCKS,
Follow your scorned and derided mates;
Tell to your guilty breasts, what mere GILT BLOCKS
You are, and how unworthy human states.

CRI. Now, sacred God of Wit, if you can make
Those, whom our sports tax in these APISH GRACES,
Kiss, like the fighting snakes, your peaceful rod,
These times shall canonise you for a god.


MER. Why, Crites, think you any noble spirit,
Or any, worth the title of a man,
Will be incensed to see the enchanted veils
Of self-conceit, and SERVILE FLATTERY,
Wrapt in so many folds by time and custom,
Drawn from his wronged and bewitched eyes?
Who sees not now their shape and nakedness,
Is blinder than the son of earth, the mole;
Crown'd with no more humanity, nor soul.

CRITES. Though they may see it, yet the huge estate
FANCY, and FORM, and SENSUAL PRIDE have gotten,
Will make them blush for anger, not for shame,
And turn shewn nakedness to impudence.
Humour is now the test we try things in:
All power is just: nought that delights is sin.
And yet the zeal of every knowing man
Opprest with hills of tyranny, cast on virtue
By the light fancies of fools, thus transported.
Cannot but vent the Aetna of his fires,
T'inflame best bosoms with much worthier love
Than of these outward and effeminate shades;
That these vain joys, in which their wills consume
Such powers of wit and soul as are of force
To raise their beings to eternity,
May be converted on works fitting men:
And, for the practice of a forced look,
An antic gesture, or a fustian phrase,
Study the native frame of a true heart,
An inward comeliness of bounty, knowledge,
And spirit that may conform them actually
To God's high figures, which they have in power;
Which to neglect for a self-loving neatness,
Is sacrilege of an unpardon'd greatness.

MER. Then let the truth of these things strengthen thee,
In thy exempt and only man-like course;
Like it the more, the less it is respected:
Though men fail, virtue is by gods protected. --
See, here comes Arete; I'll withdraw myself. [EXIT.]

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Jonson, Timber

Decipimur specie. - There is a greater reverence had of things remote or strange to us than of much better if they be nearer and fall under our sense. Men, and almost all sorts of creatures, have their reputation by distance. Rivers, the farther they run, and more from their spring, the broader they are, and greater. And where our original is known, we are less the confident; among strangers we trust fortune. Yet a man may live as renowned at home, in his own country, or a private village, as in the whole world. For it is VIRTUE that gives glory; that will endenizen a man everywhere. It is only that can naturalise him. A NATIVE, if he be vicious, deserves to be a stranger, and cast out of the commonwealth as an alien.

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Prospero:

 ...And thence retire me to my Milan, where

Every third thought shall be my grave.