The vindication of Pope from the charge of borrowing his well-known
sentiment--"_Worth_ makes a man," &c.--from Petronius, is not so
completely made out by "P.C.S.S." as it might be; for surely there is a
sufficient similitude of idea, if not of expression, between the couplet
of Pope and the sentence of Petronius, as given in all four of the
translations cited by him (No. 23. p. 362.)--"The _heart_ makes the
man," &c.--to warrant a notion that the one was suggested by the other.
But the surmise of plagiarism originates in a misconception of the terms
employed by the Latin author--_virtus_, _frugalitas_, and more
especially _corcillum_,--which have been misunderstood by every one of
these translators. _Virtus_ is applied to mental as well as bodily
superiority (_Cic. Fin._ v. 13.).--The sense in which _frugalitas_ is
employed by Petronius may be collected from a preceding passage in the
same chapter, where Trimalchio calls his pet _puerum frugalissimum_--a
very _clever_ lad--as he explains the epithet by adding that "he can
read at sight, repeat from memory, cast up accounts, and turn a penny to
his own profit." _Corcillum_ is a diminutive of _corculum_ (like
_oscillum_, from _osculum_), itself a diminutive of _cor_, which word,
though commonly put for "the heart," is also used by the best authors,
Lucretius, Horace, Terence, &c, in the same sense as our _wit_,
_wisdom_, _intellect_. The entire passage, if correctly translated,
might then be expressed as follows:
"The time has been, my friends, when I myself was no better off
than you are; but I gained my present position solely by my own
talents (_virtute_). Wit (_corcillum_) makes the man--(or,
literally, It is wisdom that makes men of us)--everything else
is worthless lumber. I buy in the cheapest and sell in the
dearest market. But, as I said before, my own shrewdness
(_frugalitas_) made my fortune. I came from Asia no taller than
that lamp stand; and used to measure my height against it day by
day, and grease my muzzle (_rostrum_) with oil from the lamp to
make a beard come."
Then follow some additional examples of the youth's sagacity, not
adapted for translation, but equally instances of worldly wisdom. Thus
every one of the actions which Trimalchio enumerated as the causes of
his prosperity are emanations from the _head_, not the _heart_; the
results of a crafty intellect, not of moral feeling; so that the
sentiment he professes, instead of being similar to, is exactly the
reverse of that expressed by Pope.
This explanation seems so satisfactory that we might be well contented
to rest here. But some MSS. have the reading _coricillum_ instead of
_corcillum_. If that be received as the genuine one, and some editors
prefer it, the interpretation above given will only be slightly
modified, but not destroyed, by the introduction of another image, the
essential point remaining the same. The insertion of a vowel, _i_,
precludes all connection with _cor_ and its diminutives, but suggests a
derivation from [Greek: korukos], dim. [Greek: korukion], a leathern
sack or bag, which, when well stuffed, the Greeks used to suspend in the
gymnasium, like the pendulum of a clock (as may be seem on a fictile
vase), to buffet to and fro with blows of the fist. The stuffed bag will
represent the human head on the end of its trunk; and the word may have
been a slang one of the day, or coined by the Asiatic Trimalchio, whose
general language is filled with provincial patois. The translation would
then be, in the familiar style of the original,--"The _noddle_ makes the
man," &c.
Anthony Rich, Jun.
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