The source of all these reports is probably Matthew xvi. 28. These words indeed are quoted in the pamphlet of 1602. Again, a legend was based on John xxi. 20, while another legend (current in the 16th century) condemned Maichus, whose ear Peter cut off (John xvii. 1o), to wander perpetually till the second coming for scoffing at Jesus. These legends and the utterance of Matt. xvi. 28 were "contaminated" with the legend of Joseph of Ari mathaea and the Holy Grail, and took the form given in Wend over and Matthew Paris. But there is nothing to show the spread of this story among the people before the pamphlet of 1602, and it is difficult to see how this Carthaphilus could have given rise to the legend of the Wandering Jew, since he is not a Jew nor does he wander. The author of 1602 was probably acquainted with the story as given by Matthew Paris, since he gives almost the same account. But he gives a new name to his hero and directly connects his fate with Matt. xvi. 28.
The combination of eternal punishment with restless wandering has attracted the imagination of writers in almost all European tongues. The German Romantic poets have been especially at tracted by the legend, which has been made the subject of poems by Schubart, Schreiber, W. A/tiller, Lenau, Chamisso, Schlegel, Mosen and Koehler. They were perhaps influenced by the example of Goethe, who in his Autobiography describes the plan of a poem he had designed on the Wandering Jew. More recently poems
have been composed on the subject in German by Wilbrandt, Lienhard and others; in English by Robert Buchanan, and in Dutch by Heijermans. German novels also exist on the subject, by Franz Horn, Oeklers, Laun and Schucking, tragedies by Kline mann, Haushofer and Zedlitz. Sigismund Heller wrote three cantos on the wanderings of Ahasuerus, while Hans Andersen made of him an "Angel of Doubt." In France, E. Quinet pub lished a prose epic on the subject in 1833, and Eugene Sue, in his best-known work, Le Juif errant (1844), associates the Jew with the legend of Herodias. In modern times the subject has been made still more popular by Gustave Dore's designs (1856), con taining some of his most striking and imaginative work. This probably suggested Grenier's poem on the subject (1857).
In England, besides the ballads in Percy's Reliques, Godwin introduced the idea of an eternal witness of the course of civi lization in his St. Leon (1799), and Shelley introduces Ahasuerus in Queen Mob. It is doubtful how far Swift derived his Struld brugs from the notion of the Wandering Jew. George Croly's Salathiel (1828) gave a highly elaborate turn to the legend; this has been republished under the title Tarry Thou Till I Come.