The Satyricon | Page 5

impulses and actions which are common to human experience, that his influence is due. By this, the Roman created a new style of writing and inaugurated a class of literature which was without parallel until the time of Apuleius and, in a lesser degree, of Lucian. This class of literature, though modified essentially from age to age, in keeping with the dictates of moral purity or bigotry, innocent or otherwise, has come to be the very stuff of which literary success in fiction is made. One may write a successful book without a thread of romance; one cannot write a successful romance without some knowledge of realism; the more intimate the knowledge the better the book, and it is frequently to this that the failure of a novel is due, although the critic might be at a loss to explain it. Petronius lies behind Tristram Shandy, his influence can be detected in Smollett, and even Fielding paid tribute to him.

IV
FORGERIES OF PETRONIUS.
From the very nature of the writings of such an author as Petronius, it is evident that the gaps in the text would have a marked tendency to stimulate the curiosity of literary forgers and to tempt their sagacity, literary or otherwise. The recovery of the Trimalchionian episode, and the subsequent pamphleteering would by no means eradicate this "cacoethes emendandi."
When, circa 1650, the library of the unfortunate Nicolas Cippico yielded up the Trau fragment, the news of this discovery spread far and wide and about twelve years later, Statileo, in response to the repeated requests of the Venetian ambassador, Pietro Basadonna, made with his own hand a copy of the MS., which he sent to Basadonna. The ambassador, in turn, permitted this MS. to be printed by one Frambotti, a printer endowed with more industry than critical acumen, and the resultant textual conflation had much to do with the pamphlet war which followed. Had this Paduan printer followed the explicit directions which he received, and printed exactly what was given him much good paper might have been saved and a very interesting chapter in the history of literary forgery would probably never have been written. The pamphlet war did not die out until Bleau, in 1670-71, printed his exact reproduction of the Trau manuscript and the corrections introduced by that licentiousness of emendation of which we have spoken.
In October, 1690, Francois Nodot, a French soldier of fortune, a commissary officer who combined belles lettres and philosophy with his official duties, wrote to Charpentier, President of the Academy of France, calling, his attention to a copy of a manuscript which he (Nodot) possessed, and which came into his hands in the following manner: one Du Pin, a French officer detailed to service with Austria, had been present at the sack of Belgrade in 1688. That this Du Pin had, while there, made the acquaintance of a certain Greek renegade, having, as a matter of fact, stayed in the house of this renegade. The Greek's father, a man of some learning, had by some means come into possession of the MS., and Du Pin, in going through some of the books in the house, had come across it. He had experienced the utmost difficulty in deciphering the letters, and finally, driven by curiosity, had retained a copyist and had it copied out. That this Du Pin had this copy in his house at Frankfort, and that he had given Nodot to understand that if he (Nodot) came to Frankfort, he would be permitted to see this copy. Owing to the exigencies of military service, Nodot had been unable to go in person to Frankfort, and that he had therefore availed himself of the friendly interest and services of a certain merchant of Frankfort, who had volunteered to find an amanuensis, have a copy made, and send it to Nodot. This was done, and Nodot concludes his letter to Charpentier by requesting the latter to lay the result before the Academy and ask for their blessing and approval. These Nodotian Supplements were accepted as authentic by the Academics of Arles and Nimes, as well as by Charpentier. In a short time, however, the voices of scholarly skeptics began to be heard in the land, and accurate and unbiased criticism laid bare the fraud. The Latinity was attacked and exception taken to Silver Age prose in which was found a French police regulation which required newly arrived travellers to register their names in the book of a police officer of an Italian village of the first century. Although they are still retained in the text by some editors, this is done to give some measure of continuity to an otherwise interrupted narrative, but they can only serve to distort the author and obscure whatever view of him the reader might otherwise have reached.