bly
about 1490 to 1540. (He was therefore a contemporary of Paracelsus, and
also of Luther, Charles V., Henry VIII. and Raphael.) Several notices of
this Dr. Johann Faust occur in writers of the period. One of the most
circumstantial is by the friend and biographer of Melanchthon, who
himself seems to have met Faust. But the various myths that gathered
round the magician were, it seems, first published in a continuous
narrative in 1587, that is about fifty years after his death. This is
the old _Frankfurter Faustbuch_, of which only one perfect specimen is
now known to exist. It is, I believe, in Leipzig. A mutilated copy is in
the Vienna Library.

One day, when to escape for a time from the German commentators above
mentioned I had gone out for a walk, I found my way to the old
Wasserkirche--now the Free Library of the city of Zuerich, and here I
discovered a facsimile reprint of this old Frankfurt Faust-book. As this
is the oldest and most authentic basis of all later forms of the story
and is doubtless the one which (as well as the puppet-play on the
subject) Goethe used as the ground-plan for his poem, I perhaps cannot
do better than give a brief abstract of its contents.

It is written in quaint old German and is interspersed with many pious
comments, biblical quotations and Latin words and phrases, and now and
then it breaks out into doggerel verse. The editor (Spiess by name)
tells us that he publishes the book 'as a warning to all Christians and
sensible people to avoid the terrible example of Doctor Faustus.' He
evidently takes the thing very seriously and has purposely (as he says)
omitted all 'magic formulae,' lest 'any should by this Historia be
incited to inquisitiveness and imitation.' Johann Faust, according to
this version, was born at Roda, a village near Weimar. (Other versions
say at Knittlingen in Wuertemberg.) His parents were honest God-fearing
peasants. His great abilities induced a rich relation in Wittenberg to
adopt and educate him. He studied theology at Wittenberg (known to us
all through Hamlet and Luther) and also at Cracow, outrivalling all
competitors and gaining the title of Doctor of Theology. But he had not
only a 'teachable and quick' but also a 'foolish, silly, inquisitive'
head, and neglecting the Bible became a 'Speculator' and prided himself
more on being an Astrologus and a Mathematicus than a Theologus. As the
old chronicler expresses it, he 'took to himself eagle's wings and