Chapter Mercer to Merlin of M by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Meridarpax, the pride of mice.

Now nobly towering o’er the rest, appears
A gallant prince that far transcends his years
Pride of his sire, and glory of his house,
And more a Mars in combat than a mouse;
His action bold, robust his ample frame,
And Meridarpax his resounding name.
   —Parnell: The Battle of the Frogs and Mice, iii. (about 1712).

Meridies or “Noonday Sun,” one of the four brothers who kept the passages of Castle Perilous. So Tennyson has named him; but in the History of Prince Arthur he is called “sir Permonês, the Red Knight.”—Tennyson: Idylls (“Gareth and Lynette”); sir T. Malory: History of Prince Arthur, i. 129 (1470).

Merlin (Ambrose), prince of enchanters. His mother was Matilda, a nun, who was sedu ced by a “guileful sprite” or incubus, “half angel and half man, dwelling in mid-air betwixt the earth and moon.” Some say his mother was the daughter of Pubidius lord of Mathtraval, in Wales; and others make her a princess, daughter of Demetius king of Demetia. Blaise baptized the infant, and thus rescued it from the powers of darkness.

Merlin died spell-bound, but the author and manner of his death are given differently by different authorities. Thus, in the History of Prince Arthur (sir T. Malory, 1470) we are told that the enchantress Nimue or Ninive enveigled the old man, and “covered him with a stone under a rock.” In the Morte d’ Arthur it is said “he sleeps and sighs in an old tree, spell-bound by Vivien.” Tennyson, in his Idylls (“Vivien”), says that Vivien induced Merlin to take shelter from a storm in a hollow oak tree, and left him spell-bound. Others say he was spell-bound in a hawthorn bush, but this is evidently a blunder. (See Merlin the Wild.)

Merlin made “the fountain of love,” mentioned by Bojardo in Orlando Innamorato, 1. 3.

Ariosto, in Orlando Furioso, says he made “one of the four fountains” (ch. xxvi.).

He also made the Round Table at Carduel for 150 knights; which came into the possession of king Arthur on his marriage with queen Guinever; and brought from Ireland the stones of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain.

(Allusion is made to him in the Faërie Queene; in Ellis’s Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances; in Drayton’s Polyolbion; in Kenilworth, by sir W. Scott, etc. T. Heywood has attempted to show the fulfilment of Merlin’s prophecies.)

Of Merlin and his skill what region doth not hear?…
Who of a British nymph was gotten, whilst she played
With a seducing sprite…
But all Demetia thro’ there was not found her peer.
   —Drayton: Polyolbion, v. (1612).

The English Merlin, W. Lilly, the astrologer, who assumed the name of “Merlinus Anglicus” (1602–1681).