[That _Papissa Joanna_ is merely a fictitious character, is now
universally acknowledged by the best authorities. "Clearer
confirmations must be drawn for the history of Pope Joan, who succeeded
Leo IV. and preceded Benedict III., than many we yet discover, and he
wants not grounds that doubts it." So thought Sir Thomas Browne, in his
_Vulgar Errors_, B. vii. Ch. 17. Gibbon, too, rejects it as fabulous.
"Till the Reformation," he says, "the tale was repeated and believed
without offence, and Joan's female statue long occupied her place among
the Popes in the Cathedral of Sienna. She has been annihilated by two
learned Protestants, Blondel and Bayle; but their brethren were
scandalized by this equitable and generous criticism. Spanheim and
L'Enfant attempted to save this poor engine of controversy, and even
Mosheim condescends to cherish some doubt and suspicion."--_The Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire_, chap. xlix. Spanheim's work, _Joanna
Papissa Restituta_, was printed at Leyden in 1692.]
_The Well o' the World's End._--I am very anxious to find out, whether
there still exists in print (or if it is known to any one now alive) an old
Scotch fairy tale called "The Weary Well at the World's End?" Charles
Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., who is unhappily dead lately, knew the story and
meant to write it down; but he became too infirm to do so, and though many
very old people in the hilly districts of Lammermoor and Roxburghshire
remember parts of it, and knew it in their youth, I cannot find one who
knows it entirely.