Although so large a part of Faustus’s life was, according to the popular legend, spent in Italy, we are not aware that this legend was ever current among the Italian people.  Some unfortunate attempts have been made to engraft the story of Don Giovanni upon this German stock, but, as it seems to us, by very arbitrary arguments and conclusions.  The career of a mere rake, who shuns no means of gratifying his low appetites, has little analogy with that of an originally honest inquirer, led astray by the want of faith and his sensual nature.  The only resemblance is in the end.  There was at first more apparent success in the endeavor to transplant the tale to Spain, where Calderon’s “Magico Prodigioso” was taken by some critics for a representation of it.  The foundation of Calderon’s drama, as mentioned before, is rather the legend of St. Cyprianus.  More may be said in favor of the radical identity of the stories of Faustus with some popular legends of the Poles, referring to a necromancer called Twardowski.  But Polish scholars will not admit this; at least, they object to giving up their great magician, and some attempts have even been made from that side to prove that theirs is the original whom the Germans appropriated under the name of Faust.

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.”  On this, Mr. A. Dyce (Works of Christopher Marlowe, 1850, I. p. xvi., note) remarks,—­“When Mr. Collier states that the old romance of Faustus was entered into the Stationers’ books in 1588, (according to a note on Henslowe’s Diary, p. 42,) he meant, I apprehend, the old ballad.”  If we bear in mind that the first German History of Dr. Faustus did not appear before the same year, we should also conclude that he must have meant the ballad, as a translation could hardly have been made in so short a time.  But considering, on the other hand, that the tragedy, which cannot have been composed later than 1589 or 1590, (as the poet, who was murdered in 1593, wrote several pieces after the one in question,) is evidently and without the least doubt founded on the Volksbuch, often adopting the very language of its English version, we must conclude that a translation of the German work was made immediately after its appearance, or possibly even from the manuscript,—­which Spiess, the German editor, professes to have obtained from Spires.  Although the word “ballad” was not properly employed for prose romances, it may have been thus used in Henslowe’s Diary by mistake.