In such an age, and under the influence of opinions, religious and philosophical, so different from those now prevalent, flourished the mysterious hero of modern magic, whom the pen of Goethe has made, likewise, one of the principal heroes of modern poetry. That a good deal of obscurity should have gathered around such a character,--that the love of the marvellous should have united with the ignorance of the age, in magnifying juggling tricks into miracles of magic, and clouding with a poetical mistiness that which was clear and definite,--is not to be wondered at. But that such a character actually existed, the tradition perpetuated from age to age on its native soil, and found, with little variation, scattered over almost every country, and clothed in almost every language of Europe, is of itself sufficient evidence. Popular legends seldom spring, like the antediluvian and prelapsarian traditions of the Talmudists, or the genealogies of old Celtic families, from mere airy nothingness; and, however contradictory and inconsistent their integrant parts may appear, they have all formed themselves around a nucleus of substantial reality. Nevertheless, as there is nothing so absurd which has not been asserted by some one of the philosophers, so there have not been wanting men of learning and investigation, who have seriously set themselves to the task of proving away the personality of the renowned Doctor Faust.[*i7] But to detect a few chronological inaccuracies in the common popular legend, and to hold out to merited contempt the silliness, and even the impossibility of many things contained in it, may afford an opportunity for the display of a pedantic erudition, but can give no ground for the sweeping conclusion that the person, of whom these stories are told, did actually never exist. The monks were clever fellows; but, with all their ability, they would have found it difficult to invent such a story as Faust--so generally believed--out of mere nothing. The sceptics themselves are sensible of this; and, accordingly, Dürr, the chief of them, while he denies the personality of Faust the magician, endeavours to give a probable reason for the prevalence of the story, by throwing the whole burden upon the back of Faust the printer, father-in-law of Peter Schoeffer, and fellow-workers both of Guttenburg,--the famous trio, among whom the honour of the invention of printing is divided. The envy of the monks, acting on the ignorance of the age, here comes most opportunely into play, to explain how the inventor of such a novel art of multiplying books should have been generally accounted a magician. There can, indeed, be little doubt that he was so accounted by many ignorant people; and as this idea is sufficiently poetical, Klingemann has taken advantage of it in his tragedy of Doctor Faust.[*i8] The main objection, however, on the face of this theory, is, that all the legends of Faust agree in placing the hero of magic fully half a