Chapter 54

HERE FOLLOWETH THE SECOND PART OF DR. FAUSTUS HIS LIFE AND PRACTICES, UNTIL HIS END.

Dr. Faustus having received denial of his spirit to be resolved any more in such questions propounded, forgot all good works, and fell to be a calendar-maker by the help of his spirit, and also in short time to be a good astronomer or astrologian. He had learned so perfectly of his spirit the course of the sun, moon, and stars, that he had the most famous name of all the mathematicians that lived in his time, as may well appear by his works dedicated unto sundry dukes and lords, for he did nothing without the advice of his spirit, which learned him to presage of matters to come, which have come to pass since his death. The like praise won he with his calendars and almanack-making; for when he presaged of anything, operations, and alterations of the weather or elements, as wind, rain, fogs, snow, hail, moist, dry, warm, cold, thunder, lightning, it fell so duly out, as if an angel of heaven had forewarned it. He did not, like the unskilful astronomers in our time, that set in winter, cold moist air, frosty, and in the dog days, hot, dry, thunder, fire, and such like; but he set in all his works the day and hour, when, where, and how it should happen. If any wonderful things were at hand, as mortality, famine, plague, wars, he would set the time and place, in true and just order, when it would come to pass.