Manlius, in his work, "Collectanea Locorum Communium," (Basel, 1600,) speaks of him as of an acquaintance. He says that Faustus studied at Krakow, in Poland, where there was a regular professorship of Magic, as was the case at several universities. Others let him make his studies at Ingolstadt, and acquire there the honors of a Doctor of Medicine. Both these statements may be true, as also that he was for some time the companion and pupil of Cornelius Agrippa, of Nettesheim, the celebrated scholar, whose learning and mysterious researches after the philosopher's stone brought him, like many other wise men of the age, into suspicion of witchcraft. Agrippa had a pet dog, black, like the mystical companion of Dr. Faustus, and, in the eyes of a superstitious multitude, like him, the representative of the Evil One. Black dogs seem to have been everywhere considered as rather suspicious creatures. The Pope Sylvester II. had also a favorite black poodle, in whom the Devil was supposed to have taken up his abode. According to Wier, however, Agrippa's black dog was quite a harmless beast, and remarkable only for the childlike attachment which the great philosopher had for him. It may be worth remarking, that this writer, although he speaks of Faustus in his biography of Agrippa, makes no mention of his ever having been a friend or scholar of the latter.
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 left there, as we shall soon see, a very unenviable reputation. It is true that Saxony was the principal scene of the Doctor's achievements; but this very circumstance makes it improbable that he was born and brought up there, as it is well known that "a prophet hath no honor in his own country."
Faust's studies were not confined to medicine and the physical sciences. He was also considered eminent as a philologist and philosopher. 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. The deepest thinkers of their time, like Nostradamus, Cardan, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Thomas Campanella, flattered themselves that they could enter, by means of art and science, into communion with good or evil spirits, on whose aid they depended for obtaining knowledge, fame, wealth, and worldly honors and enjoyments. Faustus was one of those whom a passion for inquiry, in league with a powerful, sensual nature, led astray. 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.
Dr. Faustus seems at first to have settled as a practising physician, and at this period of his life Wagner appears as his famulus; for we never find this Philister among scholars as a companion of the travelling Faustus, although his connection with him was apparently lasting. According to the popular legend, the Doctor made him his heir, and expressly obtained for him Auerhahn, (Heathcock,) a familiar spirit in the shape of a monkey. This was a sort of caricature of Mephistopheles, who became, through his ludi-
