Merlin (Ambrose), prince of enchanters.  His mother was Matilda, a nun, who was seduced 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.
    Merlin made "the fountain of love," 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 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). (The Reader's Handbook of Famous Names in Fiction, &c., Brewer, 1899)