commentaries, prologues and epilogues, and all the varied paraphernalia of genius and erudition, have been heaped on one another, to adorn the trophy of Doctor John Faustus, the great German quack. The wondrous exploits of Faust are endless, and it would be an endless task to recount the tithe of them. Were I to enter upon an exposition of how Doctor Faust first cited Mephistopheles on a crossroad in the midst of a dark fearful wood near Wittenberg,—how the Devil visited him frequently in his own study in all shapes and sizes,—how the Doctor was, after some hesitation, prevailed on to sell his soul to Lucifer, and to that effect signed a formal bond with blood drawn from his own arm,—how he neglected all the warnings of his good genius, and even the terrible writing that appeared on his wounded arm, Homo Fuge!—how the wily Devil dissuaded him from the quiet of a domestic life, when he wished to marry, that he might drag him into all kinds of licentiousness,—how he forced Mephistopheles to answer all his importunate interrogatories, as to the state of Hell, and the condition of the damned, which the Devil painted in colours as terrible as if he had been an Evangelist of the north-west Highland type,—how Faust was transported into Hell upon the back of Beelzebub, and left floundering through the chaos of the abyss,—how he travelled from star to star, and surveyed all the infinity of worlds, with as much expedition as the imagination of a modern poet,—how he turned astrologer, and vied with the fame of Nostradamus,—how he wandered over the whole world, and saw Rome, which is a city where there is a river called Tiber, and Naples, which is the birthplace of Virgil, who was also a great magician, and caused a passage to be made through the rock of Posilippo, in one night, a whole mile long,—how he played the devil in the Sultan’s seraglio, and passed himself off for Mahomet with the ladies of the palace,—how he sat invisible at the Pope’s banquet, and whipped away all the tit-bits from the plates of Pope Adrian and his assessors of the scarlet stockings, so that his Holiness was obliged to believe that some tormented soul from Purgatory was haunting the Vatican, and ordered prayers to be made accordingly,—how he further showed his enmity to the Church by making secret broaches in the wine-casks of the Bishop of Saltzburg’s cellar, and being on one occasion surprised by the butler, perched the poor wretch upon a tree, where he sprawled like a limed bird for the whole length of a frosty night,—how he called up the apparition of Alexander the Great and his Queen before the Emperor Charles V., who assured himself of the reality of this vision by touching the wart which history reports to have been upon the hero’s neck,—how in like manner he frightened the 

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