“ What city it was where Faustus lived before the reputation of witchcraft made him the subject of so much talk remains unsettled. Wittenberg and Ingolstadt are alternately named. Some of his biographers relate, that he led a loose and profligate life, and soon wasted his cousin's inheritance. Others represent him as a deep, secluded student, laying hold of one science after another, and unsatisfied by them all, until he found, by means of his physical and chemical experiments, the secret path to the supernatural, and, in order to reap their full fruits, allied himself with the hellish powers. ”

“ 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 the most hidden recesses of moral and physical creation, had seized men of real learning, and seduced them into mingling absurd astrological and magical fancies with profound and scholarlike researches. ”

“ Marlowe's poetical merit lies partly in the circumstance that he was the first to feel the depth and power of that idea, partly in the thoughts and pictures with which some speeches, principally the monologues of Faustus himself, are interwoven. The Faustus of Marlowe is the Faust of the legend, tired of learning because it is so unproductive, and selling his soul, not for knowledge, but for wealth and power. His investigating conversations with Mephistopheles, his inquiries, and the answers of the latter, are almost as shallow and childish as those in the People's Book ”

“ He buries him in a deep sleep, and creates in his place a phantom, with which the cheated devils try successfully the whole process of temptation and seduction. All this appears to Faustus in a dream. He awakes; the Devil discovers his error, and flies with shame and fury, and Faustus, thanking Providence for its warning, clings to truth and virtue more firmly than ever. ”

“ No work of Art of a more chilling, disenchanting character was ever produced. For the striking individuality of the first part, we have here nothing but abstractions; for its deep poetry, symbolism; for its glow and thrilling pathos, a plastic finish, hard and cold as marble; for its psychological truth, a bewildering mysticism. All the fine thoughts and reflections, and all the abundance of poetical passages, scattered like jewels through the thick mist of the whole work, cannot compensate for its total want of interest ”

“ But Helena, the favorite ideal of beauty of all old writers, is introduced in the popular tale, and so, too, in Marlowe. Faustus conjures up her spirit at the request of the students. Her beauty is described with glowing colors; "it would," says the old romance, "nearly have enflamed the students, but that they persuaded themselves she was a spirit, which made them lightly passe away such fancies." Not so Faustus; although he is already in the twenty-third year of his compact, he himself falls in love with the spirit, and keeps her with him until his end. ”

“ We doubt whether any popular legend has ever taken deeper root among the common people and spread farther in the world than the story of Dr. Faustus and his reckless compact with the Evil One. We do not intend to compare it, of course, to those ancient traditions which seem to have constituted a tie of relationship between the most distant nations in times anterior to history. These are mostly of a mythological character,--as, for instance, those referring to the existence of elementary spirits. ”

“ One of the latter is, indeed, also in so far remarkable, as we see from it that Lessing's mind inclined to the modern view, according to which Faustus ought to be and would be finally saved. One of the devils describes him, before temptation, as "a solitary, thinking youth, entirely devoted to wisdom,--living, breathing, only for wisdom and knowledge,--renouncing every passion but the one for truth,--highly dangerous to thee [Satan] and to us all, if he were ever to be a teacher of the people." Satan resolves at once to seduce and destroy him. But Faustus's good angel has mercy on him. ”

“ It cannot be said that Marlowe's Devil seduces Faustus. He is almost on the verge of repentance himself; of the two, he is decidedly the better Christian. The proposition of the compact comes from Faustus himself, and Mephistopheles only accepts it. Marlowe's Faustus knows nothing of the feeling of aversion and disgust with which Goethe's Faust sees himself bound to his hellish companion ”

“ Faustus's time of action was exactly the period of the great religious reformation which shook all Europe. During the sixteenth century, even the untaught and illiterate classes learned to watch more closely over the salvation of their souls than when they felt themselves safe beneath the guardianship of the Holy Mother Church. ”

“ Conceived in early youth, worked out in manhood, completed in old age, it became a vehicle for all the various commotions of his existence. There is no other poem which contains such a diversity of thought and feeling, such a variety of sentences, pictures, scenes, and situations. For enlarging on the poetical value of this incomparable work this is not the place. Closely as Goethe has followed up the popular legend, it is emphatically and entirely his own production, because it contains his complete self. ”

“ In Holland, our hero excited no small interest even among the artists. There are extant several portraits of Faustus painted by Rembrandt,-- whether ideal, or copied from older pictures, is not known. Another Dutch painter, Christoph von Sichem, represented two scenes from the life of the celebrated magician; and of these productions engravings still exist. On the one, we see Faustus and Mephistopheles,--the latter dressed like a monk, as, according to the popular tales, he mostly appeared. ”

“ Faustus the most widely-spread we know of, we cannot allude to these primitive traditions, the circulation of which is perfectly mysterious. We speak of such popular legends as admit of their origin being traced. Among these the Faustus-tradition may be called comparatively new. To us Americans, indeed, whose history commences only with the modern history of Europe, a period of three hundred years seems quite a respectable space of time. ”

“ The other plan, to judge from the fragment we possess, is less fanciful, and seems to follow more closely the popular tradition, according to which the temptations of Faustus were by no means external, but lay deep in his individual mind. In one of its lightly-sketched scenes, the poet has evidently availed himself of the one from the Miracle-Book heretofore mentioned, and, indeed, with a great deal of force. Faustus, impatient and annoyed at the slow process of human action, desires the quickest servant from hell, and successively cites seven spirits. One after another he rejects. ”

“ 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 Würtemberg are confounded. Our hero's abode at the former place was very probably merely that of a traveller ”

“ He dismisses his sympathizing friends, bidding them not to be disturbed by any noises in the night. At midnight a terrible storm arises; it reaches its height amid thunder and lightning. The friends hear a fearful shriek. They rise and pray. ”

“ That is something!--But the thoughts of men are not always quick. They are slothful when truth and virtue demand them. Thou canst be quick, if thou wilt. But who will warrant me thy being always quick?--No, I trust thee as little as I ought to have trusted myself.--Ah!-- (to the sixth spirit.) ”

“ Chamisso's tragedy of "Faustus," "in one actus," in truth only a fragment, had already appeared in the "Musenalmanach" of 1804.
To Goethe the legendary literature of his nation had been familiar from his boyhood. Very early in life, and several years before the publication of Maler Müller's spirited drama, his mind was powerfully impressed by the Faust-fable, and the greater part of the present fragmentary poem was already written and ready for print when Müller's first sketch, under the title, "Situations in the Life of Dr. Faustus," appeared (1776) . ”

“ In one feature, indeed, his history bears decidedly the stamp of the great moral revolution of the time: we mean its awful end. There are two legends of the Middle Ages--and perhaps many more--in which the fundamental ideas are the same. The two Saints, Cyprianus, (the "Magico Prodigioso" of Calderon,) and Bishop Theophilus, (the hero of Conrad of Würzburg,) were both tempted by the Devil with worldly goods and worldly prosperity, and allured into the pool of sin perhaps deeper than Faustus ”

“ Marlowe's "Faustus" has been judged rather favorably by modern English critics. Mr. Hazlitt calls it, "though an imperfect and unequal performance, Marlowe's greatest work." Mr. Hallam remarks,--"There is an awful melancholy about Marlowe's Mephistopheles, perhaps more impressive than the malignant mirth of that fiend in the renowned work of Goethe." Charles Lamb even preferred Marlowe's "Faustus," as a whole, to the latter! Mr. Collier calls it "a drama of power, novelty, interest, and variety." ”

“ There is a striking contrast between Faustus and Wagner. The first is a well-dressed man, in deep meditation; globes and instruments of science surround him;-- the other the impersonation of vulgarity. Various scenes from Faustus's life adorn the walls. Christoph von Sichem was born in 1580, and flourished at Amsterdam during the first quarter of the seventeenth century. These pictures were consequently made when the whole interest of the public for Faustus and his companions was still fresh. ”

“ Although Lessing was not a poetical genius like Goethe, the power and acuteness of his mind were so eminent, the force of his critical faculties was so penetrating, that his treatment of a subject of so much depth and intrinsic poetry would have been of the highest interest. ”

“ And when we think of the superstitious fear and monkish prejudice with which the great invention of printing was at first regarded, such a confusion of two persons of similar name, and both, in the eyes of a dark age, servants of Satan, cannot surprise us. Our John Faustus was also sometimes confounded with two younger contemporaries, one of whom was called Faustus Socinus, and made Poland the chief theatre of his operations; the other, George Sabellicus, expressly named himself Faustus Junior, also Faustus Minor. ”

“ No more nor less than the transition from Good to Evil.
"_Faustus_. Ha! thou art my devil! Quick as the transition from Good to Evil!--Yes, that is quick! Nothing is quicker!--Away from here, ye horrors of Orcus! Away!--Quick as the transition from Good to Evil!--I have learned how quick that is! I know it!"
Lessing had this fragment printed in the "Literaturbriefe," professedly as a specimen of one of the old popular dramas, despised at that time by the higher classes, though Lessing remarks,--"How fond was Germany once of its Dr. Faustus,--and is so, partly, still!" ”

“ As early as the thirteenth century, we find the custom in Germany, of young clergymen who did not belong to any monkish order travelling through the land to get a living,--here by instructing in schools for a certain period,--there by temporarily serving in churches as choristers, sacristans, or vicars,--often, too, as clerks and copyists to lawyers or other private men. When they could no longer find a livelihood at one place, they went to another. ”

“ But, according to the popular legend, his end was still more terrible. He seems to have returned to his own country, and scholars, worthy young men, surround him once more, and become much attached to him. From this one would suppose him to have been at Wittenberg, or Ingoldstadt, or any university city, but, instead of this, we find him in a little Saxon village, called Rimlich. The twenty-fourth year draws to its close. At last, at the eleventh hour, Faustus bethinks himself to repent; but it is too late. His end, related in the simple language of the Volksbuch, is truly awful. ”

“ What had been originally an honest thirst for knowledge, a deep interest in the supernatural, became gradually a morbid craving after the miraculous, the pretension of having attained the unattainable, and the attempt to represent it by means of vulgar jugglery. ”

“ The most interesting result of the publication of the Volksbuch appeared in England, where it fell, for the first, and in a hundred and fifty years the only time, into the hands of a poet. Mr. Collier, in his "History of English Dramatic Poetry," says,--"In 1588, a ballad of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus was licensed to be printed"; and adds,--"This would, according to the language of the time, have meant any composition in verse, even the play," (of Marlowe,) and subsequently mentions the same circumstance with reference to "the old romance of Dr. Faustus." ”

“ We do not know whether some of the young poets who took hold of the subject a short time after were instigated by this fragment of Lessing's, or whether they were moved by the awakening German Genius, who, just at that period, was beginning to return to his national sources for the quenching of his thirst. Between 1770 and 1780, Lenz and Maler Müller composed, the former his "Hoellenrichter," the latter his dramatized Life of Dr. Faustus. No more appropriate hero could have been found for the young "Kraft-Genies" of the "Sturm und Drang Periode" (Storm and Stress period) of German literature. ”