TIN TRADE BETWEEN BRITAIN AND ALEXANDRIA. 287 



Astronomy of the Ancients — Sir George Cornewall Lewis — may be 

 doubtful, and it is perhaps part of the miracle ; but I incline to 

 think that he would not have rejected the story as reasonable 

 evidence of a subsisting traffic between Cornwall, or Devon, and 

 the shores of the Mediterranean, in the article of tin. 



In my opinion, the marvellous part of the story would have 

 been little or no obstacle to the reception of it at the time of 

 Leontius, or even in the later times of Anastasius and of Meta- 

 phrastes. Indeed the latter is said to have been rather disposed, in 

 his translations, to over-season the sensational element, and to have 

 improved in this respect on the originals. But if the tin trade 

 with the Damnonian district had been an unheard-of figment in 

 those times, the miracle itself would have been in serious danger 

 of rejection, and the biographers of the Saint would hardly have 

 ventured to make it the vehicle of so attractive an anecdote. 

 Indeed, the author of even an avowed fiction, such as a novel or a 

 drama, knows his interest too well to surround the most efiective 

 incidents or scenes of his story with external facts and circum- 

 stances at variance with his reader's ordinary experience, or with 

 familiar and notorious facts. In the case before us, there is no 

 reason to suspect that Leontius and his Latin translators were 

 deliberately circulating a narrative of which the Saint was the 

 hero, which they did not themselves believe to be true. 



Vita S. Joh : Eleemosynarii Episcopi. Audore Leontio Episcopo. 

 Interprete Anastasio, S. E. E. Bibliothecario. 



[Acta Sanctorum, Jan. 23. Vol. 2, fol. 501]. 



Nauclerus quidam j)eregrinus damna pertulit, et accedens hunc 

 beatum virum, rogabat cum multis lacrymis ut compateretur ei 

 sicut et omnibus aliis. Prgecepitque eum accipere quinque libras 

 auri. Cumque accepisset has, abiens emit enthecam et misit in 

 navim. Mox accidit ut extra Pharum naufragium pertulisset; 

 navim ver6 non perdidit. Accessit iterum ad eum, de bon^ ejus 

 voluntate prsesumens, et dixit : " Miserere rnei, ut Deus mundi 

 misertus est." Cui ille patriarcha dixit : '' Crede, frater, nisi mis- 

 "cuisses pecuniis Ecclesise illas pecunias quae tibi remanserant, 

 ** nullatenus naufragium pertulisses. De malis enim habuisti eas, 



B 



