There seems no doubt that Doctor Faust surpassed all the wandering scholars of his time both in pretensions and notoriety. His attempts to fly and to conjure up spirits, to say nothing of the boast that he could restore lost manuscripts of classical authors, are all intelligent anticipations of what has been done or pretended in the present century. He was rather indiscreet in declaring that he had helped the Imperial armies to victory in Italy, but he may have been emboldened by patronage such as that of Philipp von Hutten and the Bishop of Bamberg, though the distinguished humanists and reformers would have nothing to do with the braggart. The students appear to have been greatly impressed by him and he certainly imposed on the uneducated people. Soon after his death the historical facts become blurred, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding his disappearance may have given an additional impulse to the subsequent legend, which appears, indeed, to have started even during his lifetime. The later contemporary references are already coloured with imaginative detail, and anecdotes relating to his various pranks, real or alleged, were circulating among all classes of the people. These soon became the nucleus of a large collection of stories, some of which had formerly been related of other magicians and were now fathered on Faust, until in the year 1587, scarcely fifty years after his death, the first printed account of the life of “Dr. Johann Faust, the notorious Magician and Necromancer” was published, as a warning to all readers, at Frankfort-on-the-Main. It is astonishing that he should so soon have become a myth, but an explanation may perhaps be sought in the ferment and unrest of an age which stands between the medieval and the modern, when old conceptions were tumbling and new worlds, both material and intellectual, were being discovered. Literature was no longer a diversion for the upper classes, and the dreams and traditions of the people were finding their way into print. Till Owlglass, the Wandering Jew, Doctor Faust are all types in which have been concentrated the lore and myth of centuries. In these representative figures, the people have focussed their longings and their aversions, their hopes and fears, and none of the wizards of popular superstition was more familiar to them than the man who had put forth his pretensions in all the market-places of Germany.