lin once had told her of a charm,
The which if any wrought on any one
With woven paces and with waving arms,
The man so wrought on ever seem'd to lie
Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower,
From which was no escape for evermore;
And none could find that man for evermore,
Nor could he see but him who wrought the charm
Coming and going; and he lay as dead
And lost to life and use and name and fame."
TENNYSON, _Merlin and Vivien_.

This charm having been duly revealed, the Lady of the Lake, weary of her
aged lover, and wishing to rid herself of him forever now that she had
learned all he could teach her, lured him into the depths of the forest.
There, by aid of the spell, she imprisoned him in a thorn bush, whence, if
the tales of the Breton peasants can be believed, his voice can be heard to
issue from time to time.

"They sate them down together, and a sleep
Fell upon Merlin, more like death, so deep.
Her finger on her lips, then Vivian rose,
And from her brown-lock'd head the wimple throws,
And takes it in her hand, and waves it over
The blossom'd thorn tree and her sleeping lover.
Nine times she waved the fluttering wimple round,
And made a little plot of magic ground.
And in that daised circle, as men say,
Is Merlin prisoner till the judgment day;
But she herself whither she will can rove--
For she was passing weary of his love."
MATTHEW ARNOLD, _Tristram and Iseult_.

[Illustration: THE BEGUILING OF MERLIN.--Burne-Jones.]

According to another version of the tale, Merlin, having grown very old
indeed, once sat down on the "Siege Perilous," forgetting that none but a
sinless man could occupy it with impunity. He was immediately swallowed up
by the earth, which yawned wide beneath his feet, and he never visited the
earth again.

A third version says that Vivian through love imprisoned Merlin in an
underground palace, where she alone could visit him. There he dwells,
unchanged by the flight of time, and daily increasing the store of
knowledge for which he was noted.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE ROUND TABLE.

Fortunately "the question of the actual existence and acts of Arthur has
very little to do with the question of the origin of the Arthurian cycle."
But although some authorities entirely deny his existence, it is probable
that he was a Briton, for