Notes and Queries, Number 26, April 27, 1850 | Page 7

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.
* * * * *
QUERIES.
WHEN WERE UMBRELLAS INTRODUCED INTO ENGLAND?
Thomas Coryat, in his _Crudities_, vol. i. p. 134., gives us a curious
notice of the early use of the umbrella in Italy. Speaking of fans, he
says:
"These fans are of a mean price, for a man may buy one of the fairest of
them for so much money as countervaileth one English groat. Also
many of them (the Italians) do carry other fine things of a far greater
price, that will cost at the least a ducat, which they commonly call in
the Italian tongue _umbrellaes_, that is, things that minister shadow
unto them for shelter against the scorching heat of the sun. These are
made of leather, something answerable to the form of a little canopy,
and hooped in the inside with diverse little wooden hoops that extend
the umbrella in a pretty large compass. They are used especially by
horsemen, who carry them in their hands when they ride, fastening the
end of the handle upon one of their thighs: and they impart so long a
shadow unto them, that it keepeth the heat of the sun from the upper
parts of their bodies."
Lt.-Col. (afterwards Gen.) Wolfe, writing from Paris, in the year 1752,
says:
"The people here use umbrellas in hot weather to defend them from the

sun, and something of the same kind to secure them from snow and rain.
I wonder a practice so useful is not introduced in England, (where there
are such frequent showers,) and especially in the country, where they
can be expanded without any inconveniency." {415}
Query, what is the date of the first introduction of the umbrella into
England?
Edward F. Rimbault
* * * * *
MINOR QUERIES.
_Duke of Marlborough._--The Annual Register for the year 1758 (pp.
121-127.) contains an account of the circumstances connected with the
trial of one Barnard, son of a surveyor in Abingdon Buildings,
Westminster, on a charge of sending letters to the Duke of
Marlborough, threatening his life by means "too fatal to be eluded by
the power of physic," unless his grace "procured him a genteel support
for his life."