PART III. CANTO III.
HO would believe what strange bugbears
Mankind creates itself, of fears,
That spring, like fern, that insect weed,
Equivocally, without seed,[1]
And have no possible foundation, 5
But merely in th' imagination?
And yet can do more dreadful feats
Than hags, with all their imps and teats;[2]
Make more bewitch and haunt themselves,
Than all their nurseries of elves. 10
For fear does things so like a witch,
'Tis hard t' unriddle which is which;
Sets no communities of senses,
To chop and change intelligences;
As Rosicrucian virtuosos 15
Can see with ears, and hear with noses;[3]
- ↑ He calls it an insect weed, on the supposition of its being bred, as many insects were thought to be, by what was called equivocal, or spontaneous, generation. Ferns have seeds so small as to be almost invisible to the naked eye; whence the ancients held them to be without seed. Our ancestors, believing that the seed of this plant was invisible, reported that those who possessed the secret of wearing it about them would become likewise invisible. Shakspeare registers this notion, no doubt banteringly, in his Henry IV. Part I. Gadshill,—We steal as in a castle, cock-sure; we have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible.
- ↑ Alluding to common superstitions about witches.
- ↑ Grey calls this a banter on the Marquis of Worcester's century of inventions; amongst which is one entitled, "how to write by the smell, the touch, or the taste, as distinctly and unconfusedly, yea, as readily, as by the sight." Butler, in his Remains, says: "This is an art to teach men to see with their ears, and hear with their eyes and noses, as it has been found true by experience and demonstration, if we may believe the history of the Spaniard, that could see words, and swallow music by holding the peg of a fiddle between his teeth; or him that could sing his part backward at first sight,
