Having commenced be a Divine in show,
Yet level at the end of every Art,

And live and die in Aristotle's works.

(Sweet Analytics, 'tis thou hast ravished me,
Bene disserere est finis logices.

Is to dispute well Logic's chiefest end?
Affords this Art no greater miracle?

Then read no more, thou hast attained the end;
A greater subject fitteth Faustus' wit:

Bid on cai me on 1 farewell, Galen come,

Seeing Ubi desinit Philosophus ibi incipit Medicus ;
Be a physician, Faustus, heap up gold,
And be eternised for some wondrous cure.
Summum bonum medicinæ sanitas,

The end of physic is our body's health.
Why, Faustus, hast thou not attained that end?
Is not thy common talk found 2 Aphorisms ? 3
Are not thy bills 4 hung up as monuments,
Whereby whole cities have escaped the Plague,

"

1 This is my own emendation. Ed. 1604 reads “Oncaymæon," which I take to be a corruption of the Aristotelian ŏv kaì μǹ ŏv (“being and not being"). The later 4tos. give (with various spelling) "Economy,' inserting the word " and " before "Galen." But "Economy," though retained by all the editors, is nonsense. With the substitution of i for y and e for a, my emendation, which gives excellent sense, is a literal transcript of the reading of ed. 1604.

2 So ed. 1616.-Eds. 1604, 1609, "sound."

3 Medical rules.

Professor Ward

4 Prescriptions by which he had worked his cures. thinks the reference is rather to "the advertisements by which, as a migratory physician, he had been in the habit of announcing his advent, and perhaps his system of cures, and which were now 'hung up as monuments' in perpetuum."

And thousand desperate maladies been eased?
Yet art thou still but Faustus and a man.
Couldst thou make man to live eternally,
Or, being dead, raise them to life again,
Then this profession were to be esteemed.
Physic, farewell.-Where is Justinian ?

Si una eademque res legatur2 duobus, alter rem alter valorem rei, &c.

3

A pretty case of paltry legacies!

Exhæreditare filium non potest pater nisi, &c.1
Such is the subject of the Institute

And universal Body of the Law.5

Ha! Stipendium, &c.
That's hard.

39

Stipendium peccati mors est. (The reward of sin is death. Si peccasse negamus fallimur et nulla est in nobis veritas. If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and there's no truth in us. Why then, belike we must sin, and so consequently die;

I, we must die an everlasting death.

1 So ed. 1616.-Eds. 1604, 1609, "wouldst."

2 Old copies "legatus."

3 Ed. 1616 "petty."

4 So ed. 1620.-Omitted in earlier copies.

5 So ed. 1616.-Eds. 1604, 1609, "" Church."

So ed. 1616.-Ed. 1604 "his." (Wagner's note is wrong.)

7 So ed. 1616.-Ed. 1604 "The deuill."

What doctrine call you this, Che sera sera,1
What will be shall be? Divinity, adieu !
These metaphysics of Magicians

And necromantic books are heavenly:
Lines, circles, scenes,2 letters, and characters:

I, these are those that Faustus most desires.
O what a world of profit and delight,
Of power, of honour, of omnipotence
Is promised to the studious artisan !

All things that move between the quiet poles
Shall be at my command: Emperors and Kings
Are but obeyed in their several provinces,
Nor can they raise the wind or rend the clouds;
But his dominion that exceeds in this
Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man.
A sound Magician is a mighty god:

Here, Faustus, tire 3 thy brains to gain a Deity.
Wagner ! 4

Enter WAGNER.

Commend me to my dearest friends,

The German Valdes and Cornelius;

Request them earnestly to visit me.

1 Old spelling for "sarà.”

2 Dyce compares Donne's first satire, ed. 1633 :

"And sooner may a gulling weather-spie

By drawing forth heaven's sceanes tell cetainly."

(Later eds. of Donne read "scheme.")

3 So ed. 1616.-Eds. 1604, 1609, "trie."

50

60

4 I have adopted the arrangement proposed by Dyce. The old eds. read :

Wagner, commend," &c.

"Enter Wagner.

Wag. I will, sir.

[Exit.

Faust. Their conference will be a greater help to me Than all my labours, plod I ne'er so fast.

Enter Good Angel and Evil Angel.

G. Ang. O Faustus! lay that damnèd book aside,
And gaze not on it lest it tempt thy soul,
And heap God's heavy wrath upon thy head.
Read, read the Scriptures: that is blasphemy.

E. Ang. Go forward, Faustus, in that famous art,
Wherein all Nature's treasure 1 is contained :

Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky,

Lord and commander of these elements.

70

[Exeunt Angels.

Faust. How am I glutted with conceit of this!
Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please,
Resolve me of all ambiguities,

Perform what desperate enterprise I will?
I'll have them fly to India for gold,
Ransack the Ocean for orient pearl,

80

And search all corners of the new-found world

For pleasant fruits and princely delicates;

I'll have them read me strange Philosophy
And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;
I'll have them wall all Germany with brass,2
And make swift Rhine circle fair Wertenberg,

1 So eds. 1609, 1616.-Ed. 1604 "treasury."

2 So Burden addresses Friar Bacon in Greene's Friar Bacon and

Friar Bungay :

66

'Thou mean'st ere many years or days be past

To compass England with a world of brass."

I'll have them fill the public schools with silk,1
Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad ;
I'll levy soldiers with the coin they bring,
And chase the Prince of Parma from our land,
And reign sole King of all our Provinces ;
Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war
Than was the fiery keel 2 at Antwerp's bridge,
I'll make my servile spirits to invent.

Enter VALDES and CORNELIUS.

Come, German Valdes and Cornelius,
And make me blest with your sage conference.

1 Dyce's correction for “skill" of the old copies.

90

2 "During the blockade of Antwerp by the Prince of Parma in 1585, 'They of Antuerpe knowing that the bridge and the Stocadoes were finished, made a great shippe, to be a meanes to breake all this worke of the prince of Parmaes: this great shippe was made of masons worke within, in the manner of a vaulted caue: vpon the hatches there were layed myll-stones, graue-stones, and others of great weight; and within the vault were many barrels of powder, ouer the which there were holes ; and in them they had put matches, hanging at a thred, the which burning vntill they came vnto the thred, would fall into the powder, and so blow vp all. And for that they could not haue any one in this shippe to conduct it, Lanckhaer, a sea captaine of the Hollanders, being then in Antuerpe, gaue them counsell to tye a great beame at the end of it, to make it to keepe a straight course in the middest of the streame. In this sort floated this shippe the fourth of Aprill, vntill that it came vnto the bridge; where (within a while after) the powder wrought his effect, with such violence, as the vessell, and all that was within it, and vpon it, flew in pieces, carrying away a part of the Stocado and of the bridge. The marquesse of Roubay Vicont of Gant, Gaspar of Robles lord of Billy, and the Seignior of Torchies, brother vnto the Seignior of Bours, with many others, were presently slaine; which were torne in pieces, and dispersed abroad, both vpon the land and vpon the water.' Grimeston's Generall Historie of the Netherlands, p. 875, ed. 1609.”Dyce.