=The Wandering Jew.= There is no legend more impressive than that of the Wandering Jew, and none save the Faust theme that has so influenced literature. The story is as deathless as the person it portrays and has wandered into as many lands, though it is impossible to trace with certainty its origin or first migrations. There is an Arabian legend of one Samiri who forever wanders, crying, "Touch me not!" as there is a Buddhist account of a man cursed for working miracles for show, to whom Buddha said, "Thou shalt not attain Nirvana while my religion lasts." There are similar Chinese and Indian versions and the idea occurs in English folk-tales, where the plovers are thought to be the souls of those that crucified Christ, condemned to fly forever over the world, uttering their plaintive cry. The first appearance of the Wandering Jew in English literature is in the Chronicles of Roger of Wendover, who reports the legend as being told at the monastery of St. Albans by an Armenian bishop, in 1228, but to hearers already familiar with it. There are two distinct versions of the story appearing in English literature. One relates that the wanderer is a certain Cartapholus, a servant in Pilate's palace, who struck Jesus a brutal blow as He was led forth to death, and to whom He said, "Thou shalt wander till I come!" The other is of German origin giving the personality of Ahasuerus, a shoemaker of Jerusalem, who mocked the Savior as He passed to Golgotha. Bowed under the weight of the cross, Christ leaned for a moment's rest against the door of the little shop, but Ahasuerus said scornfully, "Go faster, Jew!" With one look of deep reproach, Christ answered, "I go, but tarry thou till I come!" The Wandering Jew story is cosmopolitan, used in the literature of many lands. In Germany it has engaged the attention of Berthold Auerbach, Kingemann, Schlegel, Julius Mosen, and Chamisso, in France that of Edgar Quinet and Eugene Sue. Hans Christian Andersen has used it while Heijermans has written a Dutch play on it and Carmen Sylva, late Queen of Roumania, made it the basis for a long dramatic poem. The theme has appeared in various forms in English literature, besides in fiction where it has been most prominent. A comedy[155] was published in 1797, by Andrew Franklin, though the wanderer is here used only as a hoax. Wordsworth has a poem entitled The _Song of the Wandering Jew_, and Shelley was fascinated by the legend, as we see from the fact that he used it three times. One of his first poems, a long dramatic attempt, written at eighteen, is _The Wandering Jew_, a fevered poem showing the same weaknesses that his Gothic romances reveal, yet with a hint of his later power. The Wandering Jew appears as a definite character in both _Queen Mab_ and _Hellas_, in the first Ahasuerus being summoned to testify concerning God, while he appears in the latter to give supernatural vision of events. In both poems he is very old, for in the first it is said: