But Virgil gives it a bad character, speaking of it as "filicem invisam." Horace is still more severe, "neglectis urenda filix innascitur agris." The Anglo-Saxon translation of Boethius spoke contemptuously of the "Thorns, and the Furzes, and the Fern, and all the weeds" (Cockayne). And so it was in Shakespeare's time. Butler spoke of it as the-- "Fern, that vile, unuseful weed, That grows equivocably without seed." Cowley spoke the opinion of his day as if the plant had neither use nor beauty-- "Nec caulem natura mihi, nec Floris honorem, Nec mihi vel semen dura Noverca dedit-- Nec me sole fovet, nec cultis crescere in hortis Concessum, et Foliis gratia nulla meis-- Herba invisa Deis poteram cœloque videri, Et spurio Terræ nata puerperio." _Plantarum_, lib. i. And later still Gilpin, who wrote so much on the beauties of country scenery at the close of the last century, has nothing better to say for Ferns than that they are noxious weeds, to be classed with "Thorns and Briers, and other ditch trumpery." The fact, no doubt, is that Ferns were considered something "uncanny and eerie;" our ancestors could not understand a plant which seemed to them to have neither flower nor seed, and so they boldly asserted it had neither. "This kinde of Ferne," says Lyte in 1587, "beareth neither flowers nor sede, except we shall take for sede the black spots growing on the backsides of the leaves, the whiche some do gather thinking to worke wonders, but to say the trueth it is nothing els but trumperie and superstition." A plant so strange must needs have strange qualities, but the peculiar power attributed to it of making persons invisible arose thus:--It was the age in which the doctrine of signatures was fully believed in; according to which doctrine Nature, in giving particular shapes to leaves and flowers, had thereby plainly taught for what diseases they were specially useful.[91:1] Thus a heart-shaped leaf was for heart disease, a liver-shaped for the liver, a bright-eyed flower was for the eyes, a foot-shaped flower or leaf would certainly cure the gout, and so on; and then when they found a plant which certainly grew and increased, but of which the organs of fructification were invisible, it was a clear conclusion that properly used the plant would confer the gift of invisibility. Whether the people really believed this or not we cannot say,[92:1] but they were quite ready to believe any wonder connected with the plant, and so it was a constant advertisement with the quacks. Even in Addison's time "it was impossible to walk the streets without having an advertisement thrust into your hand of a doctor who had arrived at the knowledge of the Green and Red Dragon, and had discovered the female Fern-seed. Nobody ever knew what this meant" ("Tatler," No. 240). But to name all the superstitions connected with the Fern would take too much space.