Thus far Begardi in his honest naïve language. Heumann cites further a long passage from Tritheim's Epistolæ Familiares,[*i17] describing a character altogether similar to that above described by Manlius and Begardi; with this remarkable difference, that he is not called Doctor John Faust, as he is by Manlius, and in all the vulgar traditions, but "_Magister Georgius Faustus Sabellicus, Faustus Junior._" I think Stieglitz has been too precipitate in concluding that difference in the name must necessarily imply a difference in the person. The vagabond wonder-workers of those days were wont to have a number of names, as the example of Paracelsus alone is sufficient to show. With regard to the denomination of "Faustus _junior_," this cannot certainly refer to our John Faust, with whom this George (if he was a different person) must have been contemporary. It probably relates to Faust the printer, who has also been accused of magic, or to some other Faust of the fifteenth century, whose fame has been now swallowed up in that of Doctor John Faust of Wittenberg. Camerarius and Gesner[*i18] also make mention of Doctor Faust; but let the passages already quoted suffice to prove the historical reality of our magical hero. Joining together these historical testimonies and the popular traditions, it is not difficult to come to a pretty accurate conclusion as to the real character of Doctor Faust. He appears to have been a man of extensive learning, especially in medical and astrological, perhaps too in philological and theological, science. But, driven by a restless spirit, and a vain desire of popular applause, he seems to have early abandoned the calm and steady path that leads to professional eminence, and sought after that noisy but less substantial fame, which his scientific skill was fitted to procure for him in the eyes of the gazing multitude. Many of the greatest philosophers, indeed, as Solomon, Roger Bacon, and Cornelius Agrippa, have been accounted magicians for no other reason than their uncommon wisdom, far surpassing that of the age in which they lived; but there is too much reason to suspect that Faust's fame as a magician rests upon much more questionable grounds, and the whole account of his life and exploits leaves upon our mind the impression that he was a very clever vagabond quack, rather than a retired and contemplative philosopher. There is much in all that is told of him that recalls to our mind the biography of Paracelsus, a man certainly of great genius, but of much greater impudence, who gained his living by acting upon the folly of mankind.[*i19] By all accounts, indeed, Faust was a man of much more distinguished academic learning than Paracelsus, of whom historians even question whether he ever studied at any university; but as a vagabond, a boaster, and a wonder-promiser, the one is perhaps only not superior to the other. With a little knowledge of medicine, a little