In his _Narcissus_, he begins with parodying the wild conceits and romantic imagery of the fantastic sonneteers. To explain whence the beauty of Narcissus originates, a minute detail is given of the charms of his mother, the nymph Liriope, to whom the river god Cephissus makes tender propositions. After describing how the nymph paints herself in the morning, it is said of her eyes “that for boldness and honour there are no fairer lights in heaven; that they are pirates rebelliously fallen from the sun, which now, like the Dutch, wage war against the stars.”[294] Of the lips of the beauteous nymph he says, that they make “the roses wither for envy.”[295] The declaration of love, put into the mouth of Cephissus in this parodying style, is still more whimsical. If, says he, the eyes of the nymph should summon him to battle, he must be immediately subdued, because he should “see the sun divided in two eyes.”[296] He conjures her not to destroy the paper on which he has written his declaration of love, as in that case she will destroy “the house in which she dwells; and the altar on which she is worshipped.”[297] He now begins to weep bitterly, upon which Liriope observes, that if he be a true lover, the fountain of his tears must never dry up; but that it would be better to begin by giving her a little present, and to let “the sin go first and the tears follow afterwards.”[298] Andrada’s conceits, though they sometimes consist of mere plays of words, are still not of a common kind; as when he makes the covetous nymph say, that, “the demon of the flesh, flies frightened from the cross, but clings to the crossed;”[299] and that of “all beautiful streams none murmur so sweetly as the Silver River (the Rio de la Plata in South America).” At length the nymph resigns herself to the river god, and he becomes the reputed father of Narcissus. The reader is next entertained with a comic biography of Narcissus, which is a satirical representation of the history of a fashionable beau. Before he quits the cradle he is destined to become a military officer, as it is discovered that he was born “in the sign of the lion, though it was really the sign of the bull.”[300] The officer when grown up is characterized as one who though _choleric_, is never _sanguine_ (sanguinary); who has “sinned against the fifth commandment in word but not in deed;[301] and who has always displayed great gallantry in engagements with the wine flasks.[302]” Tired of the army, he applies himself to poetry, and writes a new Jerusalem Delivered, and some sonnets in which the sun is so frequently introduced, that the absurdity of the conceits or _disparates_ is, as it is said, rendered quite transparent. Narcissus also becomes fond of tracing genealogies, but he considers it beneath his dignity to study law, or to endeavour to acquire any other kind of practical knowledge. Being convinced by the heralds of his distinguished extraction, he withdraws himself from