mentioned by Bojardo in
_Orlando Innamorato_, l. 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 _Fa[:e]ry Queen_; 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).

_Merlin_ (_The English_), W. Lilly, the astrologer, who assumed the _nom
de plume_ of "Mer'linus Angl[)i]cus" (1602-1681).

=Merlin the Wild=, a native of Caledonia, who lived in the sixteenth
century, about a century after the great Ambrose Merlin, the sorcerer.
Fordun, in his _Scotichronicon_, gives particulars about him. It was
predicted that he would die by earth, wood, and water, which prediction
was fulfilled thus: A mob of rustics hounded him, and he jumped from a
rock into the Tweed, and was impaled on a stake fixed in the river bed.
His grave is still shown beneath an aged hawthorn bush at Drummelzier, a
village on the Tweed.

=Merlin's Cave=, in Dynevor, near Carmarthen, noted for its ghastly noises
of rattling iron chains, brazen caldrons, groans, strokes of hammers,
and ringing of anvils. The cause is this: Merlin set his spirits to
fabricate a brazen wall to encompass the city of Carmarthen, and as he
had to call on the Lady of the Lake, bade them not to slacken their
labor till he returned; but he never did return, for Vivien by craft got
him under the enchanted stone, and kept him there. Tennyson says he was
spell-bound by Vivien in a hollow oak tree, but the _History of Prince
Arthur_ (Sir T. Malory) gives the other version.--Spenser, _Fa[:e]ry
Queen_, iii. 3 (1590).

=Merop's Son=, a nobody, a _terrae filius_, who thinks himself somebody.
Thus Pha[:e]ton (Merop's son), forgetting that his mother was an earthborn
woman, thought he could drive the horses of the sun, but not being able
to guide them, nearly set the earth on fire. Many presume like him, and
think the