Literary Blunders | Page 7

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 not much information here, and he was ignorant of the fact that this building was in London and in Oxford Street, but he was equal to the occasion. He elaborated a remarkable account of the destruction by fire of the principal music hall of academic Oxford. He told how it was situated in the midst of historic colleges which had miraculously escaped destruction by the flames. These flames, fanned into a fury by a favourable wind, lit up the academic spires and groves as they ran along the rich cornices, lapped the gorgeous pillars, shrivelled up the roof and grasped the mighty walls of the ancient building in their destructive embraces.
In 1882 an announcement was made in a weekly paper that some prehistoric remains had been found near