ied at
Krakow, in Poland, where there was a regular professorship of Magic, as
was the case at several universities. Others let him make his studies
at Ingolstadt, and acquire there the honors of a Doctor of Medicine.
Both these statements may be true, as also that he was for some time
the companion and pupil of Cornelius Agrippa, of Nettesheim, the
celebrated scholar, whose learning and mysterious researches after the
philosopher's stone brought him, like many other wise men of the age,
into suspicion of witchcraft. Agrippa had a pet dog, black, like the
mystical companion of Dr. Faustus, and, in the eyes of a superstitious
multitude, like him, the representative of the Evil One. Black dogs
seem to have been everywhere considered as rather suspicious creatures.
The Pope Sylvester II. had also a favorite black poodle, in whom the
Devil was supposed to have taken up his abode. According to Wier,
however, Agrippa's black dog was quite a harmless beast, and remarkable
only for the childlike attachment which the great philosopher had for
him. It may be worth remarking, that this writer, although he speaks of
Faustus in his biography of Agrippa, makes no mention of his ever
having been a friend or scholar of the latter.

In several of the old stories of Faustus, we read that he had a cousin
at Wittenberg, who took him as a boy to his house, brought him up, and
made him his heir when he died. If this was true, it would be more
probable that he was a native of Saxony than of Suabia. It is, however,
more probable that this narrative rests on one of the numerous cases
found in old writings in general, and above all in the history of
Faustus, in which the names Wittenberg and Wuertemberg are confounded.
Our hero's abode at the former place was very probably merely that of a
traveller; he left there, as we shall soon see, a very unenviable
reputation. It is true that Saxony was the principal scene of the
Doctor's achievements; but this very circumstance makes it improbable
that he was born and brought up there, as it is well known that "a
prophet hath no honor in his own country."

Faust's studies were not confined to medicine and the physical
sciences. He was also considered eminent as a philologist and
philosopher. Physiology, however, with its various branches and
degenerate offshoots, was the idol of the scholars of that age, and of
Faustus among the rest. A passionate desire to fathom the mysteries of
Nature, to dive into t