[Pi]. [Beta]. asks me for some authority for the alleged practice of Roman
potters (or crock-vendors) to rub wax into the flaws of their unsound
vessels. This was the very burden of my Query! I am no proficient in the
Latin classics: yet I think I know enough to predicate that [Pi]. [Beta].
is wrong in his version of the line--
"Sincerum est nisi vas, quodcunque infundis acescit."
I understand this line as referring to the notorious fact, that some
liquors turn sour if the air gets to them from without. "Sincerum vas" is a
sound or air-tight vessel. In another place (_Sat._, lib. i. 3.), Horace
employs the same figure, where he says that we "call evil good, and good
evil," figuring the sentiment thus:
"At nos virtutes ipsas invertimus, atque
Sincerum cupimus vas _incrustare_"--
meaning, of course, that we bring the vessel into suspicion, by treating it
as if it were flawed. Dryden, no doubt, knew the radical meaning of
_sincere_ when he wrote the lines cited by Johnson:
"He try'd a tough well-chosen spear;
Th' inviolable body stood sincere."