Literary Blunders | Page 7

alias
Foster. This has puzzled many, and James Paterson, in his _Pietas
Londinensis_ (1714), hazarded the opinion that the church was
dedicated to ``two conjunct saints.'' He writes: ``At the first it was
called St. Foster's in memory of some founder or ancient benefactor,
but afterwards it was dedicated to St. Vedast, Bishop of Arras.''
Newcourt makes a similar mistake in his Reper

torium, but
Thomas Fuller knew the truth, and in his Church History refers to ``St.
Vedastus, anglice St. Fosters.'' This is the fact, and the name St. Fauster
or Foster is nothing more than a corruption of St. Vedast, all the steps
of which we now know. My friend Mr. Danby P. Fry worked this out
some years ago, but his difficulty rested with the second syllable of the
name Foster; but the links in the chain of evidence have been
completed by reference to Mr. H. C. Maxwell Lyte's valuable Report
on the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's. The first
stage in the corruption took place in France, and the name must have
been introduced into this country as Vast. This loss of the middle
consonant is in accordance with the constant practice in early French of
dropping out the consonant preceding an accented vowel, as reine from
regina. The change of Augustine to Austin is an analogous instance.
Vast would here be pronounced Vaust, in the same way as the word
vase is still sometimes pronounced vause. The interchange of v and f, as
in the cases of

Vane and Fane and fox and vixen, is too common
to need more than a passing notice. We have now arrived at the form St.
Faust, and the evidence of the old deeds of St. Paul's explains the rest,
showing us that the second syllable has grown out of the possessive

case. In one of 8 Edward III. we read of the ``King's highway, called
Seint Fastes lane.'' Of course this was pronounced St. Fausts, and
we at once have the two syllables. The next form is in a deed of May
1360, where it stands as ``Seyn Fastreslane.'' We have here, not a final r
as in the latest form, but merely an intrusive trill. This follows the rule
by which thesaurus became treasure, Hebudas, Hebrides, and
_culpatus, culprit_. After the great Fire of London, the church was
re-named St. Vedast (alias Foster)--a form of the name which it had
never borne before, except in Latin deeds as Vedastus.[1] More might
be said

of the corruptions of names in the cases of other saints,
but these corruptions are more the cause of blunders in others than
blunders in themselves. It is not often that a new saint is evolved with
such an English name as Foster.
[1] See an article by the Author in The Athenum, January 3rd,
1885, p. 15; and a paper by the Rev. W. Sparrow Simpson in the
_Jourral of the British Archological Association_ (vol. xliii., p.
56).

The existence of the famous St. Vitus has been doubted, and his dance
(_Chorea Sancti Vit_) is supposed to have been originally chorea
invita. But the strangest of saints was S. Viar, who is thus accounted for
by D'Israeli in his _Curiosities of Literature_:--
``Mabillon has preserved a curious literary blunder of some pious
Spaniards who applied to the Pope for consecrating a day in honour of
Saint Viar. His Holiness in the voluminous catalogue of his saints was
ignorant of this one. The only proof brought forward for his existence
was this inscription:--
S. VIAR.
An antiquary, however, hindered one more festival in the Catholic
calendar by convincing them that these letters were only the remains of
an inscription erected for

an ancient surveyor of the roads; and
he read their saintship thus:--

[PREFECTV]S VIAR[VM].''
Foreign travellers in England have usually made sad havoc of the
names of places. Hentzner spelt Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn
phonetically as Grezin and Linconsin, and so puzzled his editor that he
supposed these to be the names of two giants. A similar mistake to this
was that of the man who boasted that ``not all the British House of
Commons, not the whole bench of Bishops, not even Leviticus himself,
should prevent him from marrying his deceased wife's sister.'' One of
the jokes in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn (ch. xxiii.) turns on the use
of this same expression ``Leviticus himself.''
The picturesque writer who draws a well-filled-in picture from
insufficient data is peculiarly liable to fall into blunders, and when he
does fall it is not surprising that less imaginative writers should chuckle
over his fall. A few years ago an American editor is said to have
received the telegram ``Oxford Music Hall

burned to the
ground.'' There was