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More "Merlin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... patience wasn't yet exhausted. No more of wandering by night, to be sure, upon moor or fell, gun in hand, chasing the merlin or the polecat to its hidden lair; no more of long watching after the snowy owl or the long-tailed titmouse among the frozen winter woods; but there remained one almost untried field on which Edward could expend his remaining energy, and in ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... train, Where echoes oft the pleading strain Of rural lovers. O'er my soul Such varied scenes in vision roll, Whether, O prince of bards, I see The fire of Greece reviv'd in thee, That like a deluge bursts away; Or Taliesin tune the lay; Or thou, wild Merlin, with thy song Pour thy ungovern'd soul along; Or those perchance of later age More artful swell their measur'd rage, Sweet bards whose love-taught numbers suit Soft measures and the Lesbian lute; Whether, Iolo, mirtle-crown'd, Thy harp such amorous verse resound As love's and ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... such cheap ryming as his own "Bride of Abydos," for instance, which he had written from beginning to end in four days, or even the traveling reflections of Harold and Juan on men and women, were scarcely steady enough Sunday afternoon's reading for a patriarch-Merlin like Scott. So he dedicates to him a work of a truly religious tendency, on which for his own part he has done his best,—the drama of "Cain." Of which dedication the virtual significance to Sir Walter might be translated thus. Dearest and last of Border soothsayers, thou hast indeed told us of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... hear how the family inquiries go. It is now quite certain that we are a second-rate lot, and came out of Cunningham or Clydesdale, therefore BRITISH folk; so that you are Cymry on both sides, and I Cymry and Pict. We may have fought with King Arthur and known Merlin. The first of the family, Stevenson of Stevenson, was quite a great party, and dates back to the wars of Edward First. The last male heir of Stevenson of Stevenson died 1670, 220 pounds, 10s. to the bad, from drink. About the same time the Stevensons, ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... those days, there lived a famous magician named Merlin, so powerful that he could change his form at will, or even make himself invisible; nor was there any place so remote that he could not reach it at once, merely by wishing himself there. One day, suddenly he stood at Uther's bedside, and said: "Sir king, I know thy grief, and am ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... bidding. Mother Shipton, for instance, our famous old English witch, of whom so many funny stories are still told, is evidently very much wronged in her picture, if she was not of the most terrible aspect imaginable; and, if it be true, Merlin, the famous Welch fortune-teller, was a most frightful figure. If we credit another story, he was begotten by "old nick" himself. To return, however, to the devil's agents being so infernally ugly, it need merely be remarked, that from time immemorial, he ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... adventure," said he, "the world is full of meat and sleepy. Now must I ride farther afield and undertake some ancient, famous quest wherein other knights have failed and fallen. Either I shall follow the Questing Beast with Sir Palamides, or I shall find Merlin at the great stone whereunder the Lady of the Lake enchanted him and deliver him from that enchantment, or I shall assay the cleansing of the Forest Perilous, or I shall win the favour of La Belle Dame Sans Merci, or mayhap I shall adventure the quest of the ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... and soon after expired with grief. His queen, Helen, fruitlessly attempting to save his life, abandoned for a while her infant son Lancelot. Returning, she discovered him in the arms of the nymph Vivian, the mistress of Merlin, who on her approach sprung with the child into a deep lake and disappeared. This lake is held by some to be the lake Linius, a wide insular water near the sea-coast, in the regions of Linius or "The ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... chivalry filled him with emulation, and he had applied himself ardently to all knightly exercises, looking with great eagerness to the time when he might appear in the Prince's court. He had invested it with all the glory of the Round Table and of the Paladins; and though he knew he must not look for Merlin or the Siege Perilous, the men themselves were in his fancy Rolands and Tristrems, and he scarcely dared to hope he could ever be fit to make one of them, with all his diligent ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in Alsace, Rewbel and Hausmann, and a Frenchman, Merlin, all three members of the national convention, came to Mayence for the purpose of conducting the defence of that city. They burned symbolically all the crowns, mitres, and escutcheons of the German empire, but ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... Anastasius, and asserts that instead of Ista quidem ego, as given by Baronius and Binius, in the epistle of Symmachus, Ep. vii. al. vi. (see also Labbe and Cossart, t. iv. p. 1298.), the true reading is Ista quidem nego. How can this be verified? The epistle is not extant either in Crabbe or Merlin. Is the argument {198} of J. B. borne out by any good authority, either in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... Le premier et le second volume de Merlin, qui est le premier livre de la table ronde, avec plusieurs choses moult recreative: aussi les Prophecies de Merlin, qui est le tierce partie et derniere: Lettres Gothiques, 2 tom. 4to., maroq. rouge, Paris, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Thomas Lodge, Benjamin Gonson, William Winter, Lionel Ducket, Anthony Hickman, and Edward Castelin. There were two ships employed, one called the John Baptist, of which Lawrence Rondell was master, and the other the Merlin, Robert Revell master. The factors were Robert Baker, the author, Justinian Goodwine, James Gliedell, and George Gage. They set out on their voyage in November 1563, bound for Guinea and the river Sestos, but the port whence they fitted out is nowhere mentioned. After the unlucky disaster ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... and he departed, and as they rode King Arthur said, "I have no sword." "No matter," said Merlin; "hereby is a sword that shall be yours and I may." So they rode till they came to a lake, which was a fair water and a broad; and in the midst of the lake King Arthur was aware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in the hand. "Lo," said Merlin unto the King, "yonder is ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... to illustrate this, lest it be said that having been more than just to the father (v. sup.) I am still less than just to the son. Merlin is made to visit Morgane la Fee in the eleventh century. It is quite true that people generally began to hear about Merlin and Morgane at that time. But he had then been for about half a millennium in the sweet prison of the Lady of the Lake—over whom even Morgane had no power. The English ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... to accept the result, when it is forced upon us, without inquiring too minutely into the process. Not with impunity can even the Adepts gain and keep the secrets of their evil Abracadabra. The beard of Merlin is gray before its time; premature wrinkles furrow the brow of Canidia; though the terror of his stony eyes may keep the fiends at bay, the death-sleep of Michael Scott is not untroubled; the pillars of Melrose shake ever and anon as though an earthquake passed ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... heel, in a spasm of will, From sleep or debate, a mannikin squire With head of a merlin hawk and quill Acrow on an ear. At him rained fire From a blast of eyeballs hotter than speech, To say what a deadly poison stuffed The France here laid in her bloody ditch, Through the Legend passing ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... scholar and the wit must admit the twentieth-century artisan to their circle. Piers the ploughman must once more become the hero of song, and Saul Kane, the poacher, must find a place, alongside of Tiresias and Merlin, among the seers and mystics. Let democracy look to William Morris, poet, artist and social democrat, for inspiration and guidance, and take to heart the message of prophecy which he has left us: "If art, which is ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... that when Sir Lancelot Went forth to find the Grail, Grey Merlin wrinkled up the roads, For hope that he should fail; All roads led back to Lyonnesse And Camelot in the Vale, I cannot yield assent to this Extravagant hypothesis, The plain shrewd Briton will dismiss Such rumours (Daily Mail). But in the streets of Roundabout Are no such factions found, Or theories ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... I really exist? My body is so shrunken that I am hardly anything but a voice; and my bed reminds me of the singing grave of the magician Merlin, which lies in the forest of Brozeliand, in Brittany, under tall oaks whose tops soar like green flames toward heaven. Alas! I envy thee those trees and the fresh breeze that moves their branches, brother Merlin, for no green leaf ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... surprising and unknown world. But one of King Arthur's knights brought to life at the court of the present German Emperor aside from steam, electricity, gun powder, telegraph and telephones would find the system as despotic as in the days when the enchanter, Merlin, wove his spells and the sword Excalibur appeared from the depths of the magic lake. But while the system is as royal and as despotic as in King Arthur's day, while the king and his military nobles look down on the ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... lady's raven-black hair, and so rich and broad and vigorous is the painting of a Japanese scarf she is wearing. Then as we turn to the east wall of the gallery we see the three great pictures of Burne-Jones, the Beguiling of Merlin, the Days of Creation, and the Mirror of Venus. The version of the legend of Merlin's Beguiling that Mr. Burne-Jones has followed differs from Mr. Tennyson's and from the account in the Morte d'Arthur. It is taken from the Romance of Merlin, which tells ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... animals of eccentric habits in unusual abundance. The visitors to Tenby find great diversion in these and the other caves on the coast: in fact, the whole coast as far as Milford Haven is one succession of natural curiosities and antiquities. One cavern bears the name of Merlin's Cave, and is hallowed by a legend of the enchanter, who was born at Carmarthen in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... old Welsh poets it may, perhaps, be interesting to remember two. These are Taliesin, or "Shining Forehead," and Merlin. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... I think that we Shall nevermore, at any future time, Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds, Walking about the gardens and the halls Of Camelot, as in the days that were. I perish by this people which I made,— Tho' Merlin sware that I should come again To rule once more,—but let what will be, be, I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm That without help I cannot last till morn. Thou, therefore, take my brand, Excalibur, ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... shining soul, and not merely a golden body, let her forget her seventeen-year-old melodramatics, and turn to her poets who understand the heart underneath the glory. Edwin Markham, the dean of American singers, Clark Ashton Smith, the young star treader, George Sterling, that son of Ancient Merlin, have in their songs the seeds of better scenarios than California has sent us. There are two poems by George Sterling that I have had in mind for many a day as conceptions that should inspire mystic films akin to ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... tongue cleaves to the roof of St. Paul's; but he is undaunted. 'We are surely betrayed if that is really Sargent,' he says. Through the broken tracery of the Italian Gothic window a breeze or draught comes softly and fans his strong academic arms; he feels a twinge. Some Merlin told him he would suffer from ricketts with shannon complications. Seizing Excalibur, he opens the door cautiously. 'Draw, caitiffs,' he cries; 'draw.' 'Perhaps they cannot draw; perhaps they are impressionists,' said a raven on the hill; ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... King—namely, that although France would be lost by a woman, a maiden should save it. Any hope to the people in those distressful days was eagerly seized on; and although the first prophecy dated from the mythical times of Merlin, it stirred the people, especially when, later on, Joan of Arc appeared among them, and ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... Athens, that in every stone you tread on a history, so on Tweedside by every nook and valley you find the place of a ballad, a story, or a legend. From Tweed's source, near the grave of the Wizard Merlin, down to Berwick and the sea, the Border "keeps" and towers are as frequent as castles on the Rhine. Each has its tradition, its memory of lawless times, which have become beautiful in the magic of poetry and the mist ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... Merlin had been and gone—and had left two prescriptions; one written, the other verbal. With the written one, Benson, in his chauffeur's livery, was dispatched to the drug store; the verbal one was precisely what Jimmie Dale had expected ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... hands. She resembled a minute and irrepressible Shaker, or a live and beautiful marionnette. Then she placed Janet in the middle of the floor, And performed the dance round her, after the manner of Vivien and Merlin. Then came her supper, which, like its predecessors, was a solid and absorbing meal; then one more fairy story, to magnetize her off, and she danced and sang herself up stairs. And if she first came to me in the morning with a halo round her head, she seemed still to retain it when I at last watched ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... a wise magician named Merlin. He was so old that his beard was as white as snow, but his eyes were as clear as a little child's. He was very sorry to see all the fighting that was going on, because he feared that it would do serious harm to ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... and yet will not depart!— Is with me still, yet I from him exiled! 35 For still there lives within my secret heart The magic image of the magic Child, Which there he made up-grow by his strong art, As in that crystal[458:1] orb—wise Merlin's feat,— The wondrous 'World of Glass,' wherein inisled 40 All long'd-for things their beings did repeat;— And there he left it, like a Sylph beguiled, To live and yearn and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Isaac was a great magician, and had been used to raise spirits by his arts, and finally was himself carried up to heaven one night, while he was gazing at the moon; and that this event had been foretold by Merlin:—it would surely be the height of absurdity to dilate on the truth of the Newtonian theory as "the moral evidence" of the truth of the miracles and prophecy. Yet this is what those do, who adduce the excellence of the precepts ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... he passed, in eager mood To feed his hate with bitter food, Before the king's face Merlin stood And heard his tale of ill and good, Of Balen, and the sword achieved, And whence it smote as heaven's red ire That direful dame of doom as dire; And how the king's wrath turned to fire The grief wherewith ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... evening passed in gaiety until its close, when the king rose to retire. Taking in his hand a golden cup to pledge his guests, he was about to drink, when a shudder passed through his frame, and he cast the goblet away, exclaiming, 'It is not wine, but blood! My father Merlin is among us, and there is evil in the coming days. Break we up our court, my peers! It is no time for feasting, but rather for ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... tractable disposition. The gyr falcon is less than the Icelander, but much larger than the slight falcon. These powerful birds are flown at herons and hares, and are the only hawks that are fully a match for the fork-tailed kite. The merlin and hobby are both small hawks and fit only for small birds, as the blackbird, &c. The sparrow-hawk may be also trained to hunt; his flight is rapid for a short distance, kills partridges well in the early season, and is the best ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... tourists, five-and-twenty dripping ponies, and five hundred empty porter-bottles; wherefrom they returned, as do many, disgusted, and with great colds in their heads. But most they loved to scramble up the crags of Dinas Emrys, and muse over the ruins of the old tower, "where Merlin taught Vortigern the courses of the stars;" till the stars set and rose as they had done for Merlin and his pupil, behind the four great peaks of Aran, Siabod, Cnicht, and Hebog, which point to the four quarters of the heavens: ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... ye would know the grounds of my certitude: God grant that hearing them ye may understand and steadfastly believe the same. My assurances are not the marvels of Merlin, nor yet the dark sentences of profane prophesies; but, 1. the plain truth of God's word, 2. the invincible justice of the everlasting God, and 3. the ordinary course of his punishments and plagues from the beginning, ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... in that book the adventures of certain worthy knights and likewise how the magician Merlin was betrayed to his undoing by a sorceress ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... watch over him. In former times, when engaged with Abbe Rose in charitable work in the Charonne district, he had learnt that the guillotine could be seen from the house where Mege, the Socialist deputy, resided at the corner of the Rue Merlin. He therefore offered himself as a guide. As the execution was to take place as soon as it should legally be daybreak, that is, about half-past four o'clock, the brothers did not go to bed but sat up in the workroom, feeling ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the fairy-haunted land Away the other side of Brittany, Beyond the heaths, edged by the lonely sea; Of the deep forest-glades of Broce-liande, Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps, Where Merlin by the enchanted thorn-tree sleeps. For here he came with the fay Vivian, One April, when the warm days first began. He was on foot, and that false fay, his friend, On her white palfrey; here he met his end, In these lone sylvan glades, that April-day. ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... of the heroes, which appears to have been one of those that Christianity found most difficulty in rooting out. Thence Celtic Messianism, that belief in a future avenger who shall restore Cambria, and deliver her out of the hands of her oppressors, like the mysterious Leminok promised by Merlin, the Lez- Breiz of the Armoricans, the Arthur of the Welsh. [Footnote: M. Augustin Thierry has finely remarked that the renown attaching to Welsh prophecies in the Middle Ages was due to their steadfastness in affirming the future of their race. (Histoire ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... lands, perhaps near the American shore, Merlin went to England, piled the monoliths of Stonehenge on Salisbury moor, and after gaining respect and fear as a magician and prophet, sailed back across the waste. The Joyous Island of Lancelot; the island where ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... nineteenth century. Wordsworth, like Defoe, drew straight from the life. Those who will may call him a Romantic. He told of adventures—the adventures of the mind. He did not write of Bacchus, Venus, and Apollo; neither did he concern himself with Merlin, Tristram, and the Lady of the Lake. He shunned what is derived from other books. His theme is man, nature, and human life. Scott, in rich and careless fashion, dealt in every kind of material that came his ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... The Triall of Witchcraft,[10] published at London. Like Perkins he disapproved of the trial by water.[11] He discredited, too, the evidence of marks, but believed in contracts with the Devil, and cited as illustrious instances the cases of Merlin and "that infamous woman," Joan of Arc.[12] But his point of view was of course mainly that of a medical man. A large number of accusations of witchcraft were due to the want of medical examination. Many ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... the rich and poetical Celtic tradition, came into existence in the eleventh century in the North of France and immediately burst into extraordinary luxuriance. The legends of the heroes of the dreamy Celtic race—King Arthur and his knights, Merlin the magician, the knights of the Holy Grail—travelling across France, became the common property of the civilised European nations, and filled all hearts with longing and fantastic dreams. Chrestien de Troyes, in his romances, extolled knightly exploits and the service of woman, thus ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... the larger number of individuals, as might be supposed, are common to the northern portions of the three continents. Among these are the golden eagle, the white-headed or sea eagle, the osprey, the peregrine falcon, the gyrfalcon, the merlin goshawk, the common buzzard, rough-legged buzzard, hen-harrier, long-eared owl, short-eared owl, great snowy owl, and Tengmalm's owl. Nearly all the ducks and other swimming families, as might be expected, are also identical, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... Hoche's army at Brest to command a brigade of infantry. All his efforts to get the order cancelled failed, and as he did not obey it he was struck off the list of employed general officers on the 15th of September 1795, the order of the 'Comite de Salut Public' being signed by Cambaceres, Berber, Merlin, and Boissy. His application to go to Turkey still, however, remained; and it is a curious thing that, on the very day he was struck off the list, the commission which had replaced the Minister of War recommended to ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... From hag-bred Merlin's time, have I Thus nightly revelled to and fro; And for my pranks men call me by The name of Robin Good-fellow. Fiends, ghosts, and sprites, Who haunt the nights, The hags and goblins do me know And beldames old My feats have told, So ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... conqueror, King Arthur, and containeth 28 chapters. The second book treateth of Balyn the noble knight, and containeth 19 chapters. The third book treateth of the marriage of King Arthur to Queen Guinevere, with other matters, and containeth 15 chapters. The fourth book how Merlin was assotted, and of war made to King Arthur, and containeth 29 chapters. The fifth book treateth of the conquest of Lucius the emperor, and containeth 12 chapters. The sixth book treateth of Sir Lancelot and Sir Lionel, and marvellous ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... past. Books became less expensive and were accessible to everybody. Slowly they were got into more practical form—were made smaller and less bulky; not only outside but inside they were improved. 'The Lives of Saints' and Fox's 'Book of Martyrs' gave way first to the tales of Merlin and King Arthur in various versions, stories of Charlemagne, and romances of similar character. Copyrights being unknown, there was no law to protect a book, and hence all the adventures of the hero of any one tongue were passed on to the favorite hero of another ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... King laughed at the mischance and rode on. Continually birds of various sorts were flushed, and each was pursued by the appropriate hawk, the snipe by the tercel, the partridge by the goshawk, even the lark by the little merlin. But the King soon tired of this petty sport and went slowly on his way, still with the magnificent silent ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Gwynedd and Dyfedd he had no place whatever,"[431] and also that Arthur the god or mythic hero was also purely local. In Geoffrey Arthur is the fruit of Igerna's amour with Uther, to whom Merlin has given her husband's shape. Arthur conquers many hosts as well as giants, and his court is the resort of all valorous persons. But he is at last wounded by his wife's seducer, and carried to the Isle of Avallon to be cured of his wounds, and nothing more is ever heard ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... the early history of Windsor Castle appear the mighty phantoms of the renowned King Arthur and his knights, for whom it is said Merlin reared a magic fortress upon its heights, in a great hall whereof, decorated with trophies of war and of the chase, was placed the famous Round Table. But if the antique tale is now worn out, and no longer part of our faith, it ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and when the squirely flagellation shall have been completed, the white dove shall find herself delivered from the pestiferous hawks that persecute her,[476-6] and in the arms of her beloved mate; for such is the decree of the sage Merlin, arch-enchanter of enchanters." ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... to-night enregistered my name among the goodly company of Love's Lunatics,—as yokefellow with Dan Merlin in his thornbush, and with wise Salomon when he capered upon the high places of Chemosh, and with Duke Ares sheepishly agrin in the net of Mulciber. Rogues all, madame! fools all! yet always the flesh trammels us, and allures the soul to such sensual ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... contractor, we are the bricklayers. The more mediocre the man, the better his chance of getting on among mediocrities; he can play the toad-eater, put up with any treatment, and flatter all the little base passions of the sultans of literature. There is Hector Merlin, who came from Limoges a short time ago; he is writing political articles already for a Right Centre daily, and he is at work on our little paper as well. I have seen an editor drop his hat and Merlin pick it up. The fellow was careful never to give offence, and slipped ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... On finding whom he had slain, Frankton carried Llywelyn's head to Edward at Rhuddlan, who, with a barbarity unworthy of himself, set it over the Tower of London, wreathed in mockery of a prediction (ascribed to Merlin) upon the coronation of a ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... and beheld these lads. After a little time they began striving—as it was ever custom among children's play,—the one smote the other, and he these blows suffered. Then was exceeding wrath Dinabuz toward Merlin, and thus quoth Dinabuz, who had the blow: "Merlin, wicked man, why hast thou thus done to me? Thou hast done me much shame, therefore thou shalt have grief. I am a king's son, and thou art born of nought; thou oughtest not in any spot to have ...
— Brut • Layamon
... distinguished by the name of the Civil Code, and afterwards called the Code Napoleon. The labours of this important undertaking being completed, a committee was appointed for the presentation of the code. This committee, of which Cambaceres was the president, was composed of MM. Portalis, Merlin de Douai, and Tronchet. During all the time the discussions were pending, instead of assembling as usual three times a week, the Council of State assembled every day, and the sittings, which on ordinary occasions only lasted ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... King asks of the convention some Latin books, that he may instruct his son himself. 26. Address from Finisterre to the convention, denouncing the deputies Marat, Robespierre, Danton, Chabot, Barire, and Merlin. Buzot supports the accusation. 27. Kersaint proposes to the convention to make a descent upon England with one hundred thousand men, and to sign an immortal treaty upon the Tower of London, which shall fix the ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... deeply read As he that made the brazen head; Profoundly skill'd in the black art; 345 As ENGLISH MERLIN for his heart; But far more skilful in the spheres Than he was at the sieve and shears. He cou'd transform himself in colour As like the devil as a collier; 350 As like as hypocrites in show Are to true ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... PUNCHIUS ever served the good Old Year Before his death-hour struck; and on the night When he, on twelve's last stroke must pass away, Room making for his heir, great PUNCHIUS-MERLIN Left the Old King, and passing forth to breathe, Then from the mystic gateway by the chasm Descending through the wintry night—a night In which the bounds of year and year were blent— Beheld, so high upon the wave-tost deep It seemed in heaven, a light, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... them of the fairy-haunted land Away the other side of Brittany, Beyond the heaths, edged by the lonely sea; 155 Of the deep forest-glades of Broce-liande, deg. deg.156 Through whose green boughs the golden sunshine creeps Where Merlin by the enchanted thorn-tree sleeps. For here he came with the fay deg. Vivian, deg.158 One April, when the warm days first began. He was on foot, and that false fay, his friend, 160 On her white palfrey; here he met his end, In these lone sylvan ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... redoubted hero of their country, whose memory was worshipped by the populace. Though the Arthur of romantic and fairy legends—the Arthur of the round table, had been dead for six centuries, they still looked for his second appearance among them, according to the prophecy of Merlin; and now, with fond and short-sighted enthusiasm, fixed their hopes on the young Arthur as one destined to redeem the glory and independence of their oppressed and miserable country. But in the very midst of the rejoicings which succeeded the birth of the prince, his grandfather, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... endless aisles. King Arthur's castle of Camelot was not more remote from to-day than College Hall from the twentieth-century March morning. Weeks, months, a little while it stood there, vanishing—like old enchanted Merlin—into the impenetrable prison of the air. There will be other houses on that hilltop, but never one so permanent as the dear house invisible; the double Latin cross, the ten granite columns, the Center ever green with ageless palms, ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... significance of Arthur's miraculous birth? of his training by Merlin? of the Lady of the Lake? of the ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... disputed over the kingdom, each wanting it for himself. But King Uther had a son named Arthur, the rightful heir to the throne, of whom no one knew, for he had been taken away secretly while he was still a baby by a wise old man called Merlin, who had him brought up in the family of a certain Sir Ector, for fear of the malice of wicked knights. Even the boy himself thought Sir Ector was his father, and he loved Sir Ector's son, Sir Kay, with ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... Scottish General Assembly, excepting that the persecuted French Presbyterians met in a different place every year. Delegated pastors there gathered from every quarter. From Northern France came men used to live in constant hazard of their lives; from Paris, confessors such as Merlin, the chaplain who, leaving Coligny's bedside, had been hidden for three days in a hayloft, feeding on the eggs that a hen daily laid beside him; army-chaplains were there who had passionately led ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lasted a few minutes, then he walked homewards, crossing the Metropolitan Meat-market, going up St. John's Lane, beneath St. John's Arch, thence to Rosoman Street and Merlin Place, where at present he lived. All the way he pondered Clem's words. Already their import had become familiar enough to lose that first terribleness. Of course he should never take up the proposal seriously; no, ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... hills have here as at Surruk Durrah the appearance of ruined castles, with donjon or keep and tower; they forcibly reminded me of the "Castle of St. John," in Scott's Bridal of Triermain, but my visions of Merlin and fair maidens awoken from their charmed slumbers were destroyed by the sight of a little purling brook which promised me a few hours angling. Nor was I disappointed; for in a short time I (being unprovided with my fishing ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... pure, as Merlin sage, What worthier knight was found To grace in Arthur's golden age The fabled ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... fallen the state of Erin and changed the Scottish land, Though small the power of Mona, though unwaked Llewellyn's band, Though Ambrose Merlin's prophecies are held as idle tales, Though Iona's ruined cloisters are swept by northern gales, One in name and in fame ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... said Thyrston, "those jokes have been used by every conjurer since Merlin, and while perhaps without them your trick would work, yet I have never heard of it being done and I have found", said Thyrston, "that in sorcery the best results are obtained by doing ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... have punished this thine impertinent curiosity, had we not other business for thee, friend," said the malicious little devilkin. "Place thy fingers on thy thigh, and swear by Hecate, Merlin, and the Fairies' Hall, that within three days thou wilt fulfil ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... vision Joseph was now informed that the vacancy would only be filled on the day of doom. He was also told that a similar table would be constructed by Merlin. Here the grandson of Brons would honorably occupy the vacant place, which is designated in the legend as the "Siege Perilous," because it proved fatal to all for whom it ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... the word: my dear! we'll live in town." At amorous Flavio is the stocking thrown? That very night he longs to lie alone. The fool, whose wife elopes some thrice a quarter, For matrimonial solace dies a martyr. Did ever Proteus, Merlin, any witch, } Transform themselves so strangely as the rich? } Well, but the poor—the poor have the same itch; } They change their weekly barber, weekly news, Prefer a new japanner to their shoes, Discharge their garrets, move their beds, and run (They ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... building, I put my head into one of the windows that was open, and was quite surprised to see so neat and clean a dwelling in that country. The name of the owner, who was Toyune of Sherrom, was Conon Merlin. He and his wife were absent fishing, but we were not less hospitably received by his daughter and daughter-in-law, two clean dressed pretty young women, who welcomed us with their smiles, and made us imagine, ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... "Since hag-bred Merlin's time have I Continued night-sports to and fro, That, for my pranks, men call me by The name of Robin Goodfellow. There's neither hag nor spirit doth wag, The fiends and goblins do me know; And beldames old my tales have told; Sing Vale, Vale, ho, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... pronounced against him that very eloquent harangue, which Madame Roland called the "Robespierreiad." Assisted by his brother and by Danton, Robespierre, in the sitting of November 5th, overpowered the Girondins, and went to the Jacobins to enjoy the fruits of his victory, where Merlin de Thionville declared him an eagle, and a barbarous reptile. From that moment he never ceased to promote the death of Louis XVI., with an asperity and a perseverance almost incredible. In short, until the fatal day of the martyrdom of that amiable and unfortunate prince, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... Him in a closet, of such privacy That he might see her beauty unespied, And win perhaps that night a peerless bride, While legion'd fairies pac'd the coverlet, And pale enchantment held her sleepy-eyed. Never on such a night have lovers met, 170 Since Merlin paid his Demon all the ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... at him a bit for being foolhardy, and said we should hear of his being caught and committed for trial. 'Why, they'll know the dog,' says he, 'and make him give evidence in court. I've known that done before now. Inspector Merlin nailed a ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... up about their knees: a whole forest, healthy and beautiful, giving colour to the light, giving perfume to the air: what is this but the most imposing piece in nature's repertory? Heine wished to lie like Merlin under the oaks of Broceliande. I should not be satisfied with one tree; but if the wood grew together like a banyan grove, I would be buried under the tap-root of the whole; my parts should circulate from oak to oak; and my consciousness should ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... science, but which they were too apt to confound with its offspring, astrology, as we may infer, was the case with the monks of Canterbury, for their library contained a "Liber de Astroloebus," and the "Prophesies of Merlin." ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... causeries were frequented by such men as Cuvier, Humboldt, Talleyrand, Mole, de Villele, Chateaubriand, and Villemain. Other circles existed in the houses of the Dukes Pasquier and de Broglie, the countess Merlin, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... there is,—He bears his name From Dante and the seraph Gabriel,— Whose double laurels burn with deathless flame To light thine altar; He too loves thee well, Who saw old Merlin lured in Vivien's snare, And the white feet of angels coming down ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... bubbles trembling upon the edge of the wave. One is left by the receding tide, and a nearer view shows it to be a jelly-like globe, clearer than the crystal of Merlin. Dropped softly into a vessel of water, at first it lies quiescent and almost invisible upon the bottom. A moment after, it rises in quick undulations, flashing prismatic tints with every motion. Again it rests, and we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... Tissot (1884). Trained scholars were sent there annually by the French government: Cagnat, Saladin, Poinssot, La Blanchere, S. Reinach, E. Babelon, Carton, Audollent, Steph. Gsell, J. Toutain, Esperandieu, Gauckler, Merlin, Homo and many others, to say nothing of German scholars, such as Willmans and Schulten, and especially of a great number of enthusiastic officers of the army of occupation, who explored all the ancient sites, and in many cases excavated with great success (for their results see the works quoted ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... not turned Methodist, but patriot, and what is more extraordinary, am not going to have a place. What is more wonderful still, Lord Hardwicke has made two of his sons resign their employments. I know my letter sounds as enigmatic as Merlin's almanack; but my events have really happened. I had almost persuaded myself like you to quit the world; thank my stars I did not. Why, I have done nothing but laugh since last Sunday; though on Tuesday I was one of a hundred and eleven, who ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... her finger, lies the valley of Avalon, whither Arthur went to heal his overmastering sorrow, and where the air is always sweet with the smell of apple blossoms. In this deep wood lives Merlin, still weaving, as of old, the magic spells. There is the castle of the Grail, and as our eyes fall on it, suddenly there comes a hush, and we seem to hear the sublime antiphony, choir answering choir in heavenly melody, as Parsifal raises the cup, and the light ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... of Gothic romance are a British History of Arthur and his wizzard, Merlin, by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, translated into Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth; the history of Charlemagne and his twelve peers, forged by Turpin, a monk of the eighth century; the History of Troy, in two Latin works, which passed under the names of Dares Phrygius ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... last her eldest brother went to the Warlock Merlin and told him all the case, and asked him if he knew where Burd Ellen was. "The fair Burd Ellen," said the Warlock Merlin, "must have been carried off by the fairies, because she went round the church 'wider shins'—the opposite way to the sun. She is now in the Dark Tower of the King of Elfland; ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... great Prince Arthur, there lived a mighty magician, named Merlin, the most learned and skillful enchanter the ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... said to occur. These two animals could not be allowed to exist in any preserve. But it is in the list of birds that the change is most striking. Eagles are gone: if one is seen it is a stray from Scotland or Wales; and so are the buzzards, except from the moors. Falcons are equally rare: the little merlin comes down from the north now and then, but the peregrine falcon as a resident or regular visitor is extinct. The hen-harrier is still shot at intervals; but the large hawks have ceased out of the daily life, as it were, of woods and fields. Horned owls are becoming ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... waiting until the assault should be made on the fort. The flood tide setting in about the time the attack commenced, they moved with it up the river. The obstructions sunk in the Delaware had in some degree changed its channel, in consequence of which the Augusta and the Merlin grounded, a considerable distance below the second line of chevaux-de-frise and a strong wind from the north so checked the rising of the tide, that these vessels could not be floated by the flood. Their situation, however, was not discerned that evening, as the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... also no doubt who taught you of magic Mexic things in keeping with the fairy Melissa of Charlemagne's day, and Merlin the magian of Britain?" ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... however, does not tell us that this Shrubsall, in throwing down the Mincamber, i.e. the Menamber, acted very like the old missionaries in felling the sacred oaks in Germany. Merlin, it was believed, had proclaimed that this stone should stand until England had no king; and as Cornwall was a stronghold of the Stuarts, the destruction of this loyal stone may have seemed a matter of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... on this Mountain; nor as yet even loud dishonour. Gifts it boasts not, nor graces, of speaking or of thinking; solely this one gift of assured faith, of audacity that will defy the Earth and the Heavens. Foremost here are the Cordelier Trio: hot Merlin from Thionville, hot Bazire, Attorneys both; Chabot, disfrocked Capuchin, skilful in agio. Lawyer Lacroix, who wore once as subaltern the single epaulette, has loud lungs and a hungry heart. There too is Couthon, little dreaming what he is;—whom ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... little more relevance than the fancy which once interpreted the name of Virgil's mother, Magia Polla, into a supernatural significance, and, connecting the name Virgilius itself with the word Virgo, metamorphosed the poet into an enchanter born of a maiden mother, the Merlin of the ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... dragged over the chalk road over the downs, passing the wonderful stones of Amesbury—a wider circle than even Stonehenge, though without the triliths, i.e. the stones laid one over the tops of the other two like a doorway. Grisell heard some thing murmured about Merlin and Arthur and Guinevere, but she did not heed, and she was quite worn out with fatigue by the time they reached the descent into the long smooth valley where Wilton Abbey stood, and the spire of the Cathedral could be seen ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Gomeret, and he had in his company only young men, beardless as yet on chin and lip. A numerous and gay band he brought two hundred of them in his suite; and there was none, whoever he be, but had a falcon or tercel, a merlin or a sparrow-hawk, or some precious pigeon-hawk, golden or mewed. Kerrin, the old King of Riel, brought no youth, but rather three hundred companions of whom the youngest was seven score years old. Because of their great age, their heads ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... then, in a well-penned speech, announced herself as that famous Lady of the Lake renowned in the stories of King Arthur, who had nursed the youth of the redoubted Sir Lancelot, and whose beauty 'had proved too powerful both for the wisdom and the spells of the mighty Merlin. Since that early period she had remained possessed of her crystal dominions, she said, despite the various men of fame and might by whom Kenilworth had been successively tenanted. 'The Saxons, the Danes, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Goldmark's opera "Merlin" presented at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, under ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... broods Of legend laired.—And, where no sound intrudes Upon the ear, except the glimmering wail Of some far bird; or, in some flowery swale, A brook that murmurs to the solitudes, Might think he hears the laugh of Vivien Blent with the moan of Merlin, muttering bound By his own magic to one stony spot; And in the cloud, that looms above the glen,— In which the sun burns like the Table Round,— Might dream he sees the ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... replied Mendoza, "that discreet and prudent persons in France attribute my actions to any such motives. As for the ignorant people of the kingdom, they do not appal me, although they evidently imagine that I have imbibed, during my residence in England, something of the spirit of the enchanter Merlin, that, by signs and cabalistic words alone, I am thought capable of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the characters are intended to symbolize higher and lower qualities. According to some interpretations King Arthur stands for the power of conscience and Queen Guinevere for the heart. Galahad represents purity, Bors rough honesty, Percivale humility, and Merlin the power of the intellect, which is too easily beguiled by treachery. So the whole story is moralized by the entrance, through Guinevere and Lancelot, of sin; by the gradual fading, through the lightness of one or the treachery of another, of the brightness of chivalry; and by the final ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... the Argonauts), which is consecrated as the first voyage of any extent undertaken by Greeks. Both these events are as full of heroic marvels, and of supernatural marvels, as the legends of King Arthur, Merlin, and the Fairy Morgana. Later than these absolute romances comes the semi-romance of the Iliad, or expedition against Troy. This, the most famous of all Pagan romances, we know by two separate criteria to be later in date than either ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... (1150) calls it Stanhenges, and terms it the second wonder of England, but professes entire ignorance of its purpose and marvels at the method of its construction. Geoffrey of Monmouth (1150) ascribes its origin to the magic of Merlin who, at the instance of Aurelius Ambrosius, directed the invasion of Ireland under Uther Pendragon to obtain possession of the standing stones called the "Giants' Dance at Killaraus." Victory being with the invaders, the stones were taken and transported across ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... of Justice under the quintette, really ruled France for nearly five years. This was Merlin, author of the 'Law of the Suspects,' which Mr. Carlyle, though obviously in the dark as to its real genesis and objects, finds himself constrained to stigmatize as the 'frightfullest law that ever ruled in a nation ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the days of the famed Prince Arthur, who was king of Britain, in the year 516, there lived a great magician, called Merlin, the most learned and skilful enchanter in ...
— The History of Tom Thumb, and Others • Anonymous
... could control her future, and dictate her acts, and prescribe her duties, with something like the power of a god. In times past she would have tried to weave her spell around this strong man, in sheer wantonness of conquest, as Vivian threw her enchantments over Merlin; now she was conscious only of a strange willingness to submit to him, to take his yoke, and bow down under ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... director of the London opera-house, Emile Blondet, Finot, Lousteau, Felicien Vernon, Theodore Gaillard, Hector Merlin, and Bixiou, who was commissioned to invite me, as it seems they are in want of my experience and capacity ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... in Canton, as well as in London, and at one third of the expence, all those ingenious pieces of mechanism which at one time were sent to China in such vast quantities from the repositories of Coxe and Merlin. The mind of a Chinese is quick and apprehensive, and his small delicate hands are formed for the ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... again, and saw how well her smiles became her. "Yes," said she to herself, "yes, I will recall this truant merlin, and he shall return to perch upon the hand he used to love! I will be mistress of his heart and mistress of his realms. She foretold it all, and gave me the charm ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Carnarvonshire. One of the Wynns, the 3rd Baron Newborough, was, at his wish, buried here. The archaeology and history of the isle are voluminous. Lady Guest's Mabinogion translation (i. p. 115, ed. of 1838) gives an account of the (legendary) Bardsey House of Glass, into which Merlin (Myrddin) took a magic ring, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... both children were sent to a school for little children kept by a gentlewoman named Merlin, in the Rue de l'Homme Arme. According to the fallacious circular which Mademoiselle Merlin sent to the folks of the quarter, there was a garden—that is to say, four broomsticks in a sandy court; and it was there, ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... soothed their rest, Returning from the field of vanquished foes; Say, have ye lost each wild majestic close That erst the choir of Bards or Druids flung, What time their hymn of victory arose, And Cattraeth's glens with voice of triumph rung, And mystic Merlin harped, and ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... into the fabric of Peregrine's life, and he belonged to them as exclusively as the grouse or mountain linnet. He knew every rock upon their crests and every runnel of water that fretted its channel through the peat; he could mark down the merlin's nest among the heather and the falcon's eyrie in the cleft of the scar. If he started a brooding grouse and the young birds scattered themselves in all directions, he could gather them all around him by imitating the mother's call-note. The moor had for him ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... of an idealized Methuselah as he approached his ninth centennial, the God-given wisdom engraved on the face of Moses as he came down from Sinai, the mystic power of mighty Merlin as he softly intoned a spell of albamancy, all these seemed to have been blended carefully together and infused into the man who sat behind the typer, composing sentences ...
— Fifty Per Cent Prophet • Gordon Randall Garrett
... there came a little 'gray' hawke, A merlin him they call, Which untill the grounde did strike the grype, That dead he downe ...
— Book of Old Ballads • Selected by Beverly Nichols
... still fairies in those days, and those who had titles used to go to Court. Seven of them were invited to be god-mothers, Queen Titania, Queen Mab, the wise Vivien, trained by Merlin in the arts of enchantment, Melusina, whose history was written by Jean d'Arras, and who became a serpent every Saturday (but the baptism was on a Sunday), Urgele, White Anna of Brittany, and Mourgue who led Ogier the Dane into the country ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France
... dictates of civilisation, or even wild beasts to be made tame, than to imagine stones to obey the voice and the will of a human being. The example however is not singular; and hereafter we shall find related that Merlin, the British enchanter, by the power of magic caused the rocks of Stonehenge, though of such vast dimensions, to be carried through the air from Ireland to the place where we at present find them.—Homer mentions that Amphion, and his brother Zethus built the walls of ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... appointed by Queen Caroline librarian to a small collection of books in a building called Merlin's Cave, in the Royal Gardens of Richmond. "How shall we fill a library with wit, When Merlin's cave is half unfurnish'd yet?" POPE, Imitations of Horace, ii, Ep. ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... I never saw the man that brought as much to paper in a summer's day as young master here has done in one half hour; he beats the parson and 'torney Williams all to nothing. But I see how it is: they say Merlin wrote the History of Wales down to the day of judgment upon these very rocks that lie right a-head: and sure, if he did, there's somebody must come to read it: and that must be young master here. For you see he cocks his eye at the rocks, as if he had some run goods in his pocket, and ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... a universal shout They took the old regalia out From an open grave that day; From a grave that would not close, Where the first Napoleon lay Expectant, in repose, As still as Merlin, with his conquering face Turned up in its unquenchable appeal To men and heroes of the advancing race,— Prepared to set the seal Of what has been on what ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... novel and brilliant. Yet there is very little of that indefinable quality, which we call sincerity, about the score. It was happily described at its production as a clever imitation of good music. The influence of Wagner is strongest in the love music, which owes much to 'Tristan und Isolde,' 'Merlin' (1886), Goldmark's second opera, has not been as successful in Germany as 'Die Koenigin von Saba,' The libretto, which is founded upon the Arthurian legend of Merlin and Vivien, shows many points of resemblance to Wagner's later works, and the music follows his system of guiding ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... cipher of Newton with the metaphor of Mahomet, he left behind him in the East words as great as the pyramids, at Tilsit he taught Emperors majesty, at the Academy of Sciences he replied to Laplace, in the Council of State be held his own against Merlin, he gave a soul to the geometry of the first, and to the chicanery of the last, he was a legist with the attorneys and sidereal with the astronomers; like Cromwell blowing out one of two candles, he went to the Temple to bargain ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... state of Erin and changed the Scottish land, Though small the power of Mona, though unwaked Llewellyn's band, Though Ambrose Merlin's prophecies are held as idle tales, Though Iona's ruined cloisters are swept by northern gales, One in name and in fame Are ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... inspire more contempt of our versatility and inconsistency, than to remark among the foremost to demand the nuptial benediction, a Talleyrand, a Fouche, a Real, an Augereau, a Chaptal, a Reubel, a Lasnes, a Bessieres, a Thuriot, a Treilhard, a Merlin, with a hundred other equally notorious revolutionists, who were, twelve or fifteen years ago, not only the first to declaim against religious ceremonies as ridiculous, but against religion itself as useless, whose motives ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... to follow on in a more leisurely fashion," she added, seeing that he was about to refuse. "St. George is a good bird, and is anxious to try a flight; and thou art a stranger, too; thou must take it," and she placed the merlin on ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... skill to gratify this craving. The magicians of old knew that truth and conducted themselves accordingly. But our modern wonder-workers fail of their due influence, because, not content to perform their marvels, they go on to explain them. Merlin and Roger Bacon were greater public benefactors than Morse and Edison. Man is —and he always has been and will be—something else besides a pure intelligence: and science, in order to become really ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... Nature's apparently infinite variety, certain animals have a singularly close resemblance to certain others, though they be quite distinct in kind. It is a problem which perplexes us still, when we are astonished and even deluded by the likeness between a wasp and a hover-fly, a merlin and a cuckoo. In certain extreme cases we call it 'mimicry', and invoke hypotheses to account for this 'mimetic' resemblance; and those of us who reject these hypotheses must fain take refuge in others, as far-reaching in their way. This at least we know, that Speusippus seized upon a real problem ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... to know about his literary history he wrote ‘Merlin and the Gleam.’ From his boyhood he had felt the magic of Merlin—that spirit of poetry—which bade him know his power and follow throughout his work a pure and high ideal, with a simple and single devotedness ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... or more after sunrise I continued my way very briskly; then what had been the warmth of the early sun turned into the violent heat of day, and remembering Merlin where he says that those who will walk by night must sleep by day, and having in my mind the severe verses of James Bayle, sometime Fellow of St Anne's, that 'in Tuscan summers as a general rule, the days are sultry but the nights are cool' (he was no flamboyant poet; he loved ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... 12th century (Wulff, Lund, 1888). The lais of Marie de France were written in England, and the greater number of the romances composing the matiere de Bretagne seem to have passed from England to France through the medium of Anglo-Norman. The legends of Merlin and Arthur, collected in the Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth ([] 1154), passed into French literature, bearing the character which the bishop of St. Asaph had stamped upon them. Chretien de Troye's Perceval ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... little glass with the sapper Merlin, sergeant, who was on duty last night at the general's quarters, and ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... extinct, The Crusaders' streams of shadowy midnight troops sped with the sunrise, Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone, Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone, Palmerin, ogre, departed, vanish'd the turrets that Usk from its waters reflected, Arthur vanish'd with all his knights, Merlin and Lancelot and Galahad, all gone, dissolv'd utterly like an exhalation; Pass'd! Pass'd! for us, forever pass'd, that once so mighty world, now void, inanimate, phantom world, Embroider'd, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous legends, ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... up your head, and look them in the face. It is true, they are all against you; but, then, what of that, when I am on your side. It is a great thing, let me tell you, to have me on your side. I am Miss Merlin, my father's heiress; and he is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. And I am not sure but that I might make my papa have these two bad boys hanged if I insisted upon it! And I stand by you because ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... great King Arthur, who lived, as all know, when knights were bold, and ladies were fair indeed, one of the most renowned of men was the wizard Merlin. Never before or since was there such another. All that was to be known of wizardry he knew, and his advice ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... he breathed the breath of page and groom, What he called stink, and they, perfume: —They should have set him on red Berold Mad with pride, like fire to manage! They should have got his cheek fresh tannage Such a day as to-day in the merry sunshine! Had they stuck on his fist a rough-foot merlin! (Hark, the wind's on the heath at its game! Oh for a noble falcon-lanner {80} To flap each broad wing like a banner, And turn in the wind, and dance like flame!) Had they broached a cask of white beer from Berlin! —Or if you incline to ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... to the King of Araby, and it seemed to possess all the virtues of several kinds of magic mirrors. Thus it showed whether love was returned, whether an individual confronted with it were friend or foe, and what trouble was in store for those who consulted it. Merlin's mirror, also called Venus's looking-glass, had some of these properties, but was made in Wales, and was given by Merlin to King Ryence. It revealed what was being done by friend or foe at a distance, and it also enabled ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... "M. Merlin pense avec moi, et c'est quelque chose, que les justes plaintes formees contre l'administration de la bibliotheque royale [de France] cesseront des l'instant ou l'on aura redige et publie le catalogue general des livres imprimes."—Paulin ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... eldest brother went to the Warlock Merlin and told him all the case, and asked him if he knew where Burd Ellen was. "The fair Burd Ellen," said the Warlock Merlin, "must have been carried off by the fairies, because she went round the church 'wider shins'—the ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... "Merlin, the mighty liar and magician, perdition singe him for the weariness he worketh with his one tale! But that men fear him for that he hath the storms and the lightnings and all the devils that be in hell at his beck ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... understood by all and might at first appear to be easy to answer, yet no one has succeeded up to the present time in finding which of the two possible answers is correct. It is interesting to note that in 1911 E. Poincare transmitted a note written by M. Merlin to the Paris Academy of Sciences in which a theorem was announced from which its author deduced that there actually is an infinite number of such prime number pairs, but this result has not been accepted because no definite proof of the theorem in ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... foundation by the publication of the Geographie comparee of Charles Tissot (1884). Trained scholars were sent there annually by the French government: Cagnat, Saladin, Poinssot, La Blanchere, S. Reinach, E. Babelon, Carton, Audollent, Steph. Gsell, J. Toutain, Esperandieu, Gauckler, Merlin, Homo and many others, to say nothing of German scholars, such as Willmans and Schulten, and especially of a great number of enthusiastic officers of the army of occupation, who explored all the ancient sites, and in many cases ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... scenes of the olden time—mailed knights, helmed and mounted, dashing at each other with couched lances, or tumbling from their horses, pierced by the spear. Other scenes there were: noble dames, sitting on Flemish palfreys, and watching the flight of the merlin hawk. There were pages in waiting, and dogs of curious and extinct breeds held in the leash. Perhaps these never existed except in the dreams of some old-fashioned artist; but my eye followed their strange shapes with ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... to him that M. Merlin, aprs bien de gestes menaans,(43) had held a pistol, in the midst of the Assembly. His father was a mad republican, and never satisfied with the rational spirit of patriotism that animated M. Girardin; who, witnessing ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... resembled a minute and irrepressible Shaker, or a live and beautiful marionnette. Then she placed Janet in the middle of the floor, And performed the dance round her, after the manner of Vivien and Merlin. Then came her supper, which, like its predecessors, was a solid and absorbing meal; then one more fairy story, to magnetize her off, and she danced and sang herself up stairs. And if she first ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... into a bleak and barren land where the shades flit to and fro. He is straightway surrounded by them, and, on giving his name as the "Sleeping Bard," a shadowy claimant to that name sets upon him and belabours him most unmercifully until Merlin bid him desist. Taliesin then interviews him, and an ancient manikin, "Someone" by name, tells him his tale of woe. After that he is taken into the presence of the King of Terrors himself, who, seated on a ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... regard, Louis A. Sayre was to medicine what Columbus was to geography. Neither Strabo nor Herodotus had anything to say regarding what existed beyond the pillars of Hercules, and neither Hippocrates nor Galen had anything in regard to this preputial Merlin, which in their day, even, had its existence. Neither did Tissot nor Bienville, the two pioneers in the field of our knowledge regarding onanism and nymphomania, dream of the existence of this one cause of the diseases to which they gave so much time ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... finding whom he had slain, Frankton carried Llywelyn's head to Edward at Rhuddlan, who, with a barbarity unworthy of himself, set it over the Tower of London, wreathed in mockery of a prediction (ascribed to Merlin) upon the coronation of ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... farther vindication of this famous art, I have thought fit to present the world with the following prophecy. The original is said to be of the famous Merlin, who lived about a thousand years ago; and the following translation is two hundred years old, for it seems to be written near the end of Henry the Seventh's reign. I found it in an old edition of Merlin's Prophecies, ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... selected to do his bidding. Mother Shipton, for instance, our famous old English witch, of whom so many funny stories are still told, is evidently very much wronged in her picture, if she was not of the most terrible aspect imaginable; and, if it be true, Merlin, the famous Welch fortune-teller, was a most frightful figure. If we credit another story, he was begotten by "old nick" himself. To return, however, to the devil's agents being so infernally ugly, it need merely be remarked, that from ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... south as Furness, and Edward Bruce, King Robert's brother, was conquering Ireland. There was little wonder that Edward Bruce hoped to cross over to Wales when he had done his work in Ireland, or that the Welsh, buoyed up, as in the last generation, by the prophesies of Merlin, believed that the time was come when they would expel the Saxons, and win ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... the Fairies, and for a long time we have been mournful, for we have lost our Queen, our beautiful Queen. She loved a mortal, and on this account she was banished from Fairyland, nor may she ever revisit the haunt and the kingdom that were hers. But Merlin, the oldest and the wisest of the wizards, told us we should find another Queen, and that we should know her by the poppies in her hair, the whiteness of her brow, and the stillness of her eyes, and ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... who was wiser and more venerable than all the rest, and when he heard what was required of him he said he would go home and consult his secret books which contained the magic lore of all the ages, and which had been written by the greatest of all the magicians, Merlin himself. ...
— The Sleeping Beauty • C. S. Evans
... read a deposition by one Julien, relating how Carrier forced his victims to dig their graves and to allow themselves to be buried alive. The issue of October 15, 1794, contained a report by Merlin de Thionville proving that the captain of the vessel le Destin had received orders to embark forty-one victims to be drowned—"among them a blind man of 78, twelve women, twelve girls, and fourteen children, of whom ten were from 10 to 6 and ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... trembling upon the edge of the wave. One is left by the receding tide, and a nearer view shows it to be a jelly-like globe, clearer than the crystal of Merlin. Dropped softly into a vessel of water, at first it lies quiescent and almost invisible upon the bottom. A moment after, it rises in quick undulations, flashing prismatic tints with every motion. Again it rests, and we see that it is banded by eight meridians, composed of square, overlapping ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the boy, he became a great magician, or, as we in our age would call him, a man of science and wisdom, named Merlin. He lived long on the mountain, but when he went away with a friend, he placed all his treasures in a golden cauldron and hid them in a cave. He rolled a great stone over its mouth. Then with sod and earth he covered it all over so as to hide it from view. His purpose was ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... have a weird interest attached to it, and the ancient chroniclers tell of a mysterious apartment within "which has never been opened in the memory of man." Tradition says that this famous castle was first inhabited by fairies, and afterwards by the giants, until Merlin, by his magic power, dislodged most of the giants and bound the others in spells. In proof of this it is said there are fine apartments underneath the ground, to explore which several venturesome persons have gone down, ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... hoped to seize the crown for himself. The country was like to fare ill when laws were broken on every side, and the corn which was to give the poor bread was trodden underfoot, and there was none to bring the evildoer to justice. Then, when things were at their worst, came forth Merlin the magician, and fast he rode to the place where the Archbishop of Canterbury had his dwelling. And they took counsel together, and agreed that all the lords and gentlemen of Britain should ride to London and meet on Christmas Day, now at hand, in the Great ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... gloom hovering over the early history of Windsor Castle appear the mighty phantoms of the renowned King Arthur and his knights, for whom it is said Merlin reared a magic fortress upon its heights, in a great hall whereof, decorated with trophies of war and of the chase, was placed the famous Round Table. But if the antique tale is now worn out, and no longer part of our faith, it is pleasant at least ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... countless product, bequeath'd to the moderns, bequeath'd to America as studies. For the men, Yudishtura, Rama, Arjuna, Solomon, most of the Old and New Testament characters; Achilles, Ulysses, Theseus, Prometheus, Hercules, Aeneas, Plutarch's heroes; the Merlin of Celtic bards; the Cid, Arthur and his knights, Siegfried and Hagen in the Nibelungen; Roland and Oliver; Roustam in the Shah-Nemah; and so on to Milton's Satan, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Shakspere's Hamlet, Richard II., Lear, Marc Antony, &c., and the modern Faust. These, I say, are models, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... star from heaven, or darkens the face of the moon. Let us be content to accept the result, when it is forced upon us, without inquiring too minutely into the process. Not with impunity can even the Adepts gain and keep the secrets of their evil Abracadabra. The beard of Merlin is gray before its time; premature wrinkles furrow the brow of Canidia; though the terror of his stony eyes may keep the fiends at bay, the death-sleep of Michael Scott is not untroubled; the pillars of Melrose ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... to heel, in a spasm of will, From sleep or debate, a mannikin squire With head of a merlin hawk and quill Acrow on an ear. At him rained fire From a blast of eyeballs hotter than speech, To say what a deadly poison stuffed The France here laid in her bloody ditch, Through ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sea-anemones and other strange animals of eccentric habits in unusual abundance. The visitors to Tenby find great diversion in these and the other caves on the coast: in fact, the whole coast as far as Milford Haven is one succession of natural curiosities and antiquities. One cavern bears the name of Merlin's Cave, and is hallowed by a legend of the enchanter, who was born at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... saw mage Merlin, whose vast wit And hundred winters are but as the hands Of loyal vassals toiling for ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... which he had written from beginning to end in four days, or even the traveling reflections of Harold and Juan on men and women, were scarcely steady enough Sunday afternoon's reading for a patriarch-Merlin like Scott. So he dedicates to him a work of a truly religious tendency, on which for his own part he has done his best,—the drama of "Cain." Of which dedication the virtual significance to Sir Walter might be translated thus. Dearest and last of Border soothsayers, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the Saxon laws, which did not recognize as heir to the crown the son of a father who had not himself been crowned [214];—forebodings of coming evil and danger, originating in Edward's perturbed visions; revivals of obscure and till then forgotten prophecies, ancient as the days of Merlin; rumours, industriously fomented into certainty by Haco, whose whole soul seemed devoted to Harold's cause, of the intended claim of the Norman Count to the throne;—all concurred to make the election of a man matured in camp and council, doubly ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in a multitude of points, but they have one and all delighted in pastorals. No class of heroes either in history or fiction has uttered so much verse and prose as the keepers of sheep. Neither Ajax son of Telamon, nor the wise king of Ithaca, nor Merlin, Lancelot, or Charlemagne, nor even the inexhaustible Grandison, can bear the least comparison with Tityrus. It is easy to give many reasons for this; but the phenomenon still remains somewhat strange. The best explanation is perhaps that the pastoral is ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... fortune-teller', 'Here lives an astrologer', 'Here you may have your nativity calculated', and the like; and Friar Bacon's brazen-head, which was the usual sign of these people's dwellings, was to be seen almost in every street, or else the sign of Mother Shipton, or of Merlin's head, and the like. ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... in every school yard in the city of Saginaw are some Washington walnuts growing today. Following this distribution to the schools we had still several bushels of the nuts, and one bushel was presented to what is known as Merlin Grotto, a branch or division of the Masonic Order. As General Washington was a member of that organization it seemed fitting that that society should have some of the nuts. So in the beautiful grounds outside of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... which he could not make: and they now fabricate in Canton, as well as in London, and at one third of the expence, all those ingenious pieces of mechanism which at one time were sent to China in such vast quantities from the repositories of Coxe and Merlin. The mind of a Chinese is quick and apprehensive, and his small delicate hands are formed for the execution of ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Maxwell?" answered the knight, who apparently interpreted the deputy- chamberlain's meaning rather from his action than his words;—"it is of an ancient and liberal pattern, having been made by your mother's father, auld James Stitchell, a master-fashioner of honest repute, in Merlin's Wynd, whom I made a point to employ, as I am now happy to remember, seeing your father thought fit to intermarry with sic a ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... true loyalty and duty Will I regard them in my honoring rhyme, With love for love, and homages to beauty, And magic thoughts gather'd in night's cool clime, With studious verse trancing the dragon Time, Strong as old Merlin's necromantic spells; So these dear monarchs of the summer's prime Shall live unstartled by his dreadful yells, Till shrill larks warn them to their ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... "'To Merlin, the enchanter, he hath left the choice, who by some strange spell I wot not of will send an eerie call through all the kingdom. And only those will hear who wake at dawn to listen in high places. And only those will heed who keep the compass ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... up my sheathed sword and caught it again in a frenzy of delight, while the gloomy men about me smiled at my enthusiasm. I felt the horse beneath me move once more like a thing of life. No enchanter with his wand, not Merlin nor Virgil, could have made a greater change in my world, than had the captain of the gate with his simple key! Or so it seemed to me in the first moments of freedom, and escape—of ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... ardently to all knightly exercises, looking with great eagerness to the time when he might appear in the Prince's court. He had invested it with all the glory of the Round Table and of the Paladins; and though he knew he must not look for Merlin or the Siege Perilous, the men themselves were in his fancy Rolands and Tristrems, and he scarcely dared to hope he could ever be fit to make one of them, with all his diligent attention to ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... poems, it is written in an heroic stanza of six lines, and, as is not so common with him, is in dialogue form. The dialogue for the most part is well sustained and sprightly. The story of the birth of Merlin, it is true, seems to have been inserted mainly to fill out the required number of pages; but this digression has an interest of its own, in that the name here given to Merlin's mother, "Lady Adhan," does not appear in the ordinary versions of ...
— The Bride • Samuel Rowlands et al
... him, and everyone else in the land, King Melodias was just then released from enchantment by Merlin the wizard, and came hurrying joyfully to his home, to embrace his beloved wife. Great was his grief when he found that she was dead, great was the moan he made in his sorrow. With great pomp and splendour he buried her, ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... country and committed every kind of excess. Jean de Beaumanoir repaired to Ploermel to remonstrate, and it was agreed to settle the dispute by a fight between thirty warriors from each camp. The prophecies of Merlin were consulted, and found to promise victory to the English. The appointed place of meeting was by a large oak, the "Chene de Mi-Voie," on a lande or large plain, half way from each town. The battle began with great fury, ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... passing the wonderful stones of Amesbury—a wider circle than even Stonehenge, though without the triliths, i.e. the stones laid one over the tops of the other two like a doorway. Grisell heard some thing murmured about Merlin and Arthur and Guinevere, but she did not heed, and she was quite worn out with fatigue by the time they reached the descent into the long smooth valley where Wilton Abbey stood, and the spire of the Cathedral could be seen ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as "Merlin" in our handbook in the Referee at the time, thus disposed of some of the points just ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... Tweedside that the tourist will find his most pleasant guide in Lauder's book. Just as Cicero said of Athens, that in every stone you tread on a history, so on Tweedside by every nook and valley you find the place of a ballad, a story, or a legend. From Tweed's source, near the grave of the Wizard Merlin, down to Berwick and the sea, the Border "keeps" and towers are as frequent as castles on the Rhine. Each has its tradition, its memory of lawless times, which have become beautiful in the magic of poetry and ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... a poem, not long published, from the MSS. De Rerum Natura, by Neckham, the foster-brother of Richard the Lion-hearted. He quotes an old prophecy, attributed to Merlin, and with a sort of wonder, as if recollecting that England owed so much of its literary learning to that country; and the prophecy says that after long years Oxford will pass into Ireland—'Vada boum suo tempore transibunt in Hiberniam.' ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... Doctor Merlin had been and gone—and had left two prescriptions; one written, the other verbal. With the written one, Benson, in his chauffeur's livery, was dispatched to the drug store; the verbal one was precisely what Jimmie Dale had expected ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... Kecollections"; Sutherland Edwards's "History of the Opera"; Fetis's "Biographie des Musiciens"; Ebers's "Seven Years of the King's Theatre"; Lumley's "Reminiscences"; Charles Hervey's "Theatres of Paris"; Arsene Houssaye's "Galerie de Portraits"; Countess de Merlin's "Memoires de Madame Malibran"; Ox-berry's "Dramatic Biography and Histrionic Anecdotes"; Crowest's "Musical Anecdotes" and ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... much success under the encouragement of Hellmesberger and others, who recognized his ability before he had made any impression out of Vienna. Four of his compositions during the past fifteen years, the "Sakuntala" overture, the operas "The Queen of Sheba" and "Merlin," and "Die Iaendliche Hochzeit" (The Country Wedding) symphony have made a permanent reputation for him. The overture and operas have been performed several times in this country. Besides these he has written ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... gyr falcon is less than the Icelander, but much larger than the slight falcon. These powerful birds are flown at herons and hares, and are the only hawks that are fully a match for the fork-tailed kite. The merlin and hobby are both small hawks and fit only for small birds, as the blackbird, &c. The sparrow-hawk may be also trained to hunt; his flight is rapid for a short distance, kills partridges well in the early season, and is the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... third or fourth century, Y Trioeddy nys Prydain ("The Triads of the Isle of Britain"). It contains the traditions from the ancient times until the seventh century. Among the famous triads of this book are: The three bards who bore the cloth of gold, Merlin Ambrosius, Merlin, son of Morvryn, and Taleisin, chief of the bards. There were three principles of song: Composition of poetry, execution upon the harp, and erudition. In the sixth century we see the bards playing the harp and singing their stirring songs with inspiring ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... and at Suresnes during the summer; and her friend the Duchess de Duras' causeries were frequented by such men as Cuvier, Humboldt, Talleyrand, Mole, de Villele, Chateaubriand, and Villemain. Other circles existed in the houses of the Dukes Pasquier and de Broglie, the countess Merlin, and Madame ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... not repeat my wishes to have my little sonnets printed verbatim my last way. In particular, I fear lest you should prefer printing my first sonnet, as you have done more than once, "did the wand of Merlin wave," it looks so like Mr. Merlin, [1] the ingenious successor of the immortal Merlin, now living in good health and spirits, and flourishing in magical reputation, in Oxford Street; and, on my life, one half who read ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... already hurled himself, weaponless, upon the seeming victor and seizing him about the waist with mighty strength, hurled him to the ground. And even as the fallen knight, much shaken, prepared to arise, lo, Merlin the Wizard appeared and cast him into a ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... to Cecilia was at first extremely painful; but time and constancy of mind soon lessened its difficulty. She amused herself with walking and reading, she commissioned Mr Monckton to send her a Piano Forte of Merlin's, she was fond of fine work, and she found in the conversation of Mrs Delvile a never-failing resource against languor and sadness. Leaving therefore to himself her mysterious son, she wisely resolved to find other employment for her thoughts, than ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... the wealth of local legend and story which haunted the misty regions he visited. In dealing with demons and familiar spirits he cites the authority of Merlin, "whose fame is still great in England," and tells a story of a young woman living in the country of Mar.[130] This damsel was of noble family and very fair in person, but she displayed a great unwillingness to ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... in a thousand conjugal scenes, beaten by the most logical arguments (the late logicians Tripier and Merlin were nothing to her, as the preceding chapter has sufficiently shown you), beaten by the most tender caresses, by tears, by your own words turned against you, for under circumstances like these, a woman lies in wait in her house ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... have been derived from that of two Arabian giants Gog and Magog. The stones which compose Stonehenge, each containing some medicinal virtue, are fabled to have been transported by giants from the deserts of Africa to Ireland, and to have been carried thence by Merlin's enchantment to form a monument over the British slain by Hengist. The state of criticism existing at this time may be imagined from the fact that even afterwards, in the reign of Edward I., the descent of the Britons from the Trojans through Brutus was solemnly ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... natives of Colmar in Alsace, Rewbel and Hausmann, and a Frenchman, Merlin, all three members of the national convention, came to Mayence for the purpose of conducting the defence of that city. They burned symbolically all the crowns, mitres, and escutcheons of the German empire, but were unable to induce the citizens of Mayence ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... one thousand foot and five hundred horse. Besides these he had his feudatories of the palatinate; six bannerets and one hundred and sixty knights, not one of whom, says an old poem, but surpassed Arthur himself, though endowed with the charmed gifts of Merlin. [Footnote: Onques Artous pour touz ces charmes, Si beau prisent ne ot de Merlyn. SIEGE OF KARLAVEROCK; an old Poem in Norman French.] We presume the De Wessyngtons were among those preux chevaliers, as the banner of St. Cuthbert had been taken from its shrine on the occasion, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... determine its length to a nicety. The subject suggests curious questions. Suppose—to look at its romantic side, as easier of discussion—that you, young lady, were passionately adored by the young man at your shoe-shop, and he were to kiss your foot as Vivien did Merlin's, could you—would you—complain at the desk and lose him his situation? And how about the Pope? Is his Holiness never measured—sal a reverentia!—for his shoes? Or does the Oecumenical Council guess, and strike an average? However, the current of the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... devil's politics. 365 Hell is the pattern of all commonwealths: Lucifer was the first republican. Will you hear Merlin's prophecy, how three [posts?] 'In one brainless skull, when the whitethorn is full, Shall sail round the world, and come back again: 370 Shall sail round the world in a brainless skull, And come back again when the moon is at full:'— When, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... de Baux any more. In addition there was a fire of juniper wood and frankincense upon the hearth, and the room smelt too cloyingly of be-drugging sweetness. Then on the walls were tapestries which depicted Merlin's Dream, so that everywhere recoiling women smiled with bold eyes; and here their wantonness ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... this Mountain; nor as yet even loud dishonour. Gifts it boasts not, nor graces, of speaking or of thinking; solely this one gift of assured faith, of audacity that will defy the Earth and the Heavens. Foremost here are the Cordelier Trio: hot Merlin from Thionville, hot Bazire, Attorneys both; Chabot, disfrocked Capuchin, skilful in agio. Lawyer Lacroix, who wore once as subaltern the single epaulette, has loud lungs and a hungry heart. There too is Couthon, little dreaming what he is;—whom a sad chance has paralysed in the lower ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... of this first season in Rome the Bryants came to town, and the old poet, old in aspect even then, called on us; but he was not a childly man, and we youngsters stood aloof and contemplated with awe his white, Merlin beard and tranquil but chilly eyes. Near the end of May William Story invited us to breakfast with him; the Bryants and Miss Hosmer and some English people were there; and I understood nothing of what passed except the ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... lower qualities. According to some interpretations King Arthur stands for the power of conscience and Queen Guinevere for the heart. Galahad represents purity, Bors rough honesty, Percivale humility, and Merlin the power of the intellect, which is too easily beguiled by treachery. So the whole story is moralized by the entrance, through Guinevere and Lancelot, of sin; by the gradual fading, through the lightness of one or the treachery of another, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... and turning to the left, she bent her steps towards a footbridge spanning a gap in the cliff side and, pausing at the bridge, let her eyes rest musingly on the great, mysterious opening picturesquely known as Merlin's Cave. The tide was coming in fast, and she could hear the waves boom hollowly as they slid over its stony floor, only to meet and fight the opposing rush of other waves from the further end—since what had once been the ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Jan. 3. Goldmark's opera "Merlin" presented at the Metropolitan Opera House, New ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... no doubt who taught you of magic Mexic things in keeping with the fairy Melissa of Charlemagne's day, and Merlin the magian ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the substance of the Riverside Edition has been preserved, with hardly an exception, although some poems and fragments have been added. None of the poems therein printed have been omitted. "The House," which appeared in the first volume of Poems, and "Nemesis," "Una," "Love and Thought" and "Merlin's Songs," from the May-Day volume, have been restored. To the few mottoes of the Essays, which Mr. Emerson printed as "Elements" in May-Day, most of the others have been added. Following Mr. ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... self shall move against High Jimmu Tenno's throne The Forty-seven Ronin Men Will not be found alone. For Percival and Bedivere And Nogi side by side Will stand,—with mourning Merlin there, Tho ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... of Gomeret, and he had in his company only young men, beardless as yet on chin and lip. A numerous and gay band he brought two hundred of them in his suite; and there was none, whoever he be, but had a falcon or tercel, a merlin or a sparrow-hawk, or some precious pigeon-hawk, golden or mewed. Kerrin, the old King of Riel, brought no youth, but rather three hundred companions of whom the youngest was seven score years old. Because of their great age, their heads were all as white as snow, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... ever served the good Old Year Before his death-hour struck; and on the night When he, on twelve's last stroke must pass away, Room making for his heir, great PUNCHIUS-MERLIN Left the Old King, and passing forth to breathe, Then from the mystic gateway by the chasm Descending through the wintry night—a night In which the bounds of year and year were blent— Beheld, so high upon the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... the Roman Church claimed, as I have said, a monopoly in orthodox magic. She could send a soul to hell, or by rites and exorcism she could save the sinner from his compact with Satan, as one sees in such legends as those of Merlin, of Tannhaeuser, of Robert the Devil, and of that Theophilus who was converted by flowers sent him from Paradise by the Virgin-Martyr St. Dorothea. Of another Theophilus, an eastern monk of perhaps the ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... fruitful orchards, the low blue hills tenderly interlacing one another, the fields of colza, where the white head-dress of the women-workers flashed in the sun like a silvery pigeon's wing. To the west there were the deep green woods, and the wide plains golden with gorse of Arthur's and of Merlin's lands; and beyond, to the northward, was the dim stretch of the ocean breaking on a yellow shore, whither the river ran, and whither led straight shady roads, hidden with linden and with poplar trees, and marked ever and anon by a wayside wooden Christ, or by ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... imaginative. Wace had amplified Geoffrey's chronicle somewhat, but Layamon made much larger additions, derived, no doubt, from legends current on the Welsh border. In particular the story of Arthur grew in his hands into something like fullness. He tells of the enchantments of Merlin, the wizard; of the unfaithfulness of Arthur's queen, Guenever; and the treachery of his nephew, Modred. His narration of the last great battle between Arthur and Modred; of the wounding of the king—"fifteen fiendly wounds he had, one might ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... rose up, took the gold from him, beat him and cast him out of the cave. He never recovered the effects of that beating, but remained a cripple and a pauper to the end of his days; and he never could find the entrance to the cavern again. Merlin and the charm ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... chaplains[150] to King Henry V, gives the particulars of the final treaty, signed at the house of the Archdeacon of Bangor, more amply than they can be found elsewhere. The expectation declared in this treaty that the contracting parties would turn out to be those spoken of by Merlin, who were to divide amongst them the Greater Britain, as it is called, corroborates the story told by Hall. The whole passage is here submitted to the reader's perusal: the words are evidently those of the treaty." The reader is then furnished with a copy of the Latin original: but, since no point ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... well to illustrate this, lest it be said that having been more than just to the father (v. sup.) I am still less than just to the son. Merlin is made to visit Morgane la Fee in the eleventh century. It is quite true that people generally began to hear about Merlin and Morgane at that time. But he had then been for about half a millennium in the sweet prison of the Lady of the Lake—over whom even Morgane had no power. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... blood-cells of various Vertebrates (equally magnified). 1. of man, 2. camel, 3. dove, 4. proteus, 5. water-salamander (Triton), 6. frog, 7. merlin (Cobitis), 8. lamprey (Petromyzon). a surface-view, ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... for word: my translation renders Homer exactly. I choose the short bit where Thetis pleads with Jove for her irate son, because I am sure Tennyson must have had this passage in his mind when he drew his word-picture of Vivien with Merlin. ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... surrounded with tea-gardens, the most popular being Sadlier's Wells, Merlin's Cave, Cromwell Gardens, Jenny's Whim, Cuper Gardens, London Spa, and the White Conduit House, where they used to take in fifty pounds on a Sunday afternoon ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... had given himself, this worthy M. Voltaire! "My dear M. Casanova, I am really vexed with you. What concern have I with the works of Merlin? It is your fault that I have wasted four hours over ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... see how she could pull down a stone wall. It's like the story of Dinas Emrys father told me," he added with relish. "King Vortigern was building a castle on Snowdon, and every night whatever they had built in the daytime fell down. After awhile they sent for old Merlin to see what the matter was. And it was two great serpents in a pool away down under the foundation. One was white and one was red, and they fought all the time. First the white one had the best of it, but the red one beat him ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... end of September, after three sessions of the Court of Appeals in which the lawyers for the defence pleaded, and the attorney-general Merlin himself spoke for the prosecution, the appeal was rejected. The Imperial Court of Paris was by this time instituted. Monsieur de Grandville was appointed assistant attorney-general, and the department of the Aube coming under the jurisdiction of this court, it became possible for him to take certain ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... Pythagoras, Democritus, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus made greater progresses in the several empires of science than any of their successors have since been able to reach"; which is just as absurd as if he had said that the greatest names in British science are Merlin, Michael Scott, Dr. Sydenham, and Lord Bacon. Indeed, the manner in which Temple mixes the historical and the fabulous reminds us of those classical dictionaries, intended for the use of schools, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Charlemagne, Of Merlin and the Mort d'Arthure, Mingled together in his brain With talcs of Flores and Blanchefleur, Sir Launcelot, Sir Morgadour, Sir Guy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... porter-bottles; wherefrom they returned, as do many, disgusted, and with great colds in their heads. But most they loved to scramble up the crags of Dinas Emrys, and muse over the ruins of the old tower, "where Merlin taught Vortigern the courses of the stars;" till the stars set and rose as they had done for Merlin and his pupil, behind the four great peaks of Aran, Siabod, Cnicht, and Hebog, which point to the four quarters of the heavens: or to lie by the side of the boggy spring, which once was the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... sickness. In 1616 he elaborated his notions in The Triall of Witchcraft,[10] published at London. Like Perkins he disapproved of the trial by water.[11] He discredited, too, the evidence of marks, but believed in contracts with the Devil, and cited as illustrious instances the cases of Merlin and "that infamous woman," Joan of Arc.[12] But his point of view was of course mainly that of a medical man. A large number of accusations of witchcraft were due to the want of medical examination. ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... world holds record. Such a sleep They sleep—the men I loved. I think that we Shall nevermore, at any future time, Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds, Walking about the gardens and the halls Of Camelot, as in the days that were. I perish by this people which I made,— Tho' Merlin sware that I should come again To rule once more,—but let what will be, be, I am so deeply smitten thro' the helm That without help I cannot last till morn. Thou, therefore, take my brand, Excalibur, Which ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... the enchanted lands, perhaps near the American shore, Merlin went to England, piled the monoliths of Stonehenge on Salisbury moor, and after gaining respect and fear as a magician and prophet, sailed back across the waste. The Joyous Island of Lancelot; the island where King Arthur wrestled and ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... government with an intent to influence any action. It was brought out by Doctor Logan, a well-meaning Republican of Pennsylvania, who had unofficially gone to France in an effort to avert the threatened war and had held communication to this end with Talleyrand, Merlin, the First Director, and others. With the suspicion common to the times, the Federalists thought he was endeavouring to act as mediator or plotting some league with France in the event of war. This act marked the extreme limit, to the Republican mind, of the ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... rail and scold like butter-women, methinks 'tis pretty sport, and fit [6479]for Calphurnius and Democritus to laugh at. But when I see so much blood spilt, so many murders and massacres, so many cruel battles fought, &c. 'tis a fitter subject for Heraclitus to lament. [6480]As Merlin when he sat by the lake side with Vortigern, and had seen the white and red dragon fight, before he began to interpret or to speak, in fletum prorupit, fell a weeping, and then proceeded to declare to the king what it meant. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... he, "the world is full of meat and sleepy. Now must I ride farther afield and undertake some ancient, famous quest wherein other knights have failed and fallen. Either I shall follow the Questing Beast with Sir Palamides, or I shall find Merlin at the great stone whereunder the Lady of the Lake enchanted him and deliver him from that enchantment, or I shall assay the cleansing of the Forest Perilous, or I shall win the favour of La Belle Dame Sans Merci, or mayhap I shall adventure the quest of ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... connection with history: it was to Snowdon that Vortigern retired from the fury of his own subjects, caused by the favour which he showed to the detested Saxons. It was there that he called to his counsels Merlin, said to be begotten on a hag by an incubus, but who was in reality the son of a Roman consul by a British woman. It was in Snowdon that he built the castle, which he fondly deemed would prove impregnable, but which his enemies destroyed by flinging wild-fire over its walls; ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... other Poems. John Carpe. Gregories of Hackwood. Crime of Andrew Blair. Chevalier Merlin [unfinished]. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... MERLIN. Health to the representatives of France! I pass'd this moment through the armed force— They ask'd my name—and when they heard a delegate, Swore I was ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... No. 3 to a comatose condition Miss Chandos reverted to No. 1, and by attractive passes got him on his legs and made him follow her up and down the limited space at her disposal. She looked then like a pretty Vivien manipulating a youthful Merlin; and I was not at all surprised at the effect of her "woven paces and her waving hands." She asked him his name, and he told her. It was W——. "No," she said, "it's Jones. Mary Jones. What's your name?" But the youth was not quite so far gone as to rebaptize ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Jo can stop at Mrs. Merlin's and take her to Top Hill. She always presides in my absence. She is a good housekeeper and is never ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... it may, perhaps, be interesting to remember two. These are Taliesin, or "Shining Forehead," and Merlin. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... territory, has in our times unusually increased in population and strength, they boast in their turn, and most confidently and unanimously affirm, that in a short time their countrymen shall return to the island, and, according to the prophecies of Merlin, the nation, and even the name, of foreigners, shall be extinguished in the island, and the Britons shall exult again in their ancient name and privileges. But to me it appears ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... he departed, and as they rode King Arthur said, "I have no sword." "No matter," said Merlin; "hereby is a sword that shall be yours and I may." So they rode till they came to a lake, which was a fair water and a broad; and in the midst of the lake King Arthur was aware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in the hand. "Lo," said Merlin unto the King, "yonder ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... generous Bradamant," the matron cried, "Know thine arrival in this hallowed hold Was not unauthorized of heavenly guide: And the prophetic ghost of Merlin told, Thou to this cave shouldst come by path untried, Which covers the renowned magician's mould. And here have I long time awaited thee, To tell what ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... for the withdrawal of the French troops and that the land should not be flooded with assignats. The independence of the Batavian Republic was taken for granted. Very different were the conditions laid before them by Merlin de Douat, Rewbell and Sieyes. A war contribution of 100,000,000 florins was demanded, to be paid in ready money within three months, a loan of like amount at 3 per cent, and the surrender of all territory south of the Waal together with Dutch ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... or wolf-cub brought them.[184] This wood, which Jeanne could see from her threshold, was the Bois Chesnu, the wood of oaks, or possibly the hoary [chenu] wood, the old forest.[185] We shall see later how this Bois Chesnu was the subject of a prophecy of Merlin the Magician. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... he died the other kings and princes disputed over the kingdom, each wanting it for himself. But King Uther had a son named Arthur, the rightful heir to the throne, of whom no one knew, for he had been taken away secretly while he was still a baby by a wise old man called Merlin, who had him brought up in the family of a certain Sir Ector, for fear of the malice of wicked knights. Even the boy himself thought Sir Ector was his father, and he loved Sir Ector's son, Sir Kay, with the ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... would be one of the two Directors who were elected in place of Carnot and Barthelemy; but the Councils had no higher opinion of his civic capacity than Bonaparte had formed; and, to his great disgust, Merlin of Douai and Francois of Neufchatel were chosen. The last scenes of the coup d'etat centred around the transportation of the condemned deputies. One of the early memories of the future Duc de Broglie recalled the sight of the "deputes fructidorises travelling in closed ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... interest the poems of Merlin. The enclosed is longer than either of those, and certainly not so good: yet as I flatter myself that it has a smack of Merlin's style in it, and as I feel that it expresses forcibly enough some ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... where Coligny was lying. "He suffered atrociously in the hands of the surgeon, for he had come without his instruments, and amputated Coligny's fingers with a dagger so blunt that it was only on the third attempt that he succeeded. Merlin, his minister, was by his side, with several of his most intimate friends. We were in tears at the sight of our noble chief thus traitorously struck down. He turned ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... by the French King—namely, that although France would be lost by a woman, a maiden should save it. Any hope to the people in those distressful days was eagerly seized on; and although the first prophecy dated from the mythical times of Merlin, it stirred the people, especially when, later on, Joan of Arc appeared among them, and her story ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... neighbourhood, on account of bread. 25. The King asks of the convention some Latin books, that he may instruct his son himself. 26. Address from Finisterre to the convention, denouncing the deputies Marat, Robespierre, Danton, Chabot, Barire, and Merlin. Buzot supports the accusation. 27. Kersaint proposes to the convention to make a descent upon England with one hundred thousand men, and to sign an immortal treaty upon the Tower of London, which shall fix the destiny of nations, and confirm ...
— Historical Epochs of the French Revolution • H. Goudemetz
... the ruined castle from the vicar, who is its warden! It seems, when it was built by the old princes of West Wales—very beautiful as well as strong, with walls "painted of many colours," it was placed under a powerful spell by Merlin, that it might become invisible twice in every year. How I should like to be at Tintagel at the right time, and see if the ruins would disappear from before my eyes. I believe they would; and the enchantment would take the form of ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... passed, in eager mood To feed his hate with bitter food, Before the king's face Merlin stood And heard his tale of ill and good, Of Balen, and the sword achieved, And whence it smote as heaven's red ire That direful dame of doom as dire; And how the king's wrath turned to fire ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... years of his life are few and evil. "Can it be that I still actually exist? My body is so shrunk that there is hardly anything of me left but my voice, and my bed makes me think of the melodious grave of the enchanter Merlin, which is in the forest of Broceliand in Brittany, under high oaks whose tops shine like green flames to heaven. Ah, I envy thee those trees, brother Merlin, and their fresh waving! for over my mattress-grave ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... send our letter speediest, my Merlin?" His enchantress laid her emerald spell over him—O incomparable witch! Such sorcery exalted him always. He lifted her question upon one of his ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... who dominated the room by right of his power, his magnetism, the very distortion of his spirit. Here in this lonely square of light and warmth, surrounded by a world of savage, lawless winds heightening the voices of vast loneliness, these three people were imprisoned by him, a Merlin of the West. ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... but involved in much more sudden and total ruin than the personages of real history usually meet with; yet, if it is thought fit he should be restored, it is done as quickly and completely as if Merlin's rod had been employed. He enters Russia with a prodigious army, which is totally ruined by an unprecedented hard winter; (everything relating to this man is prodigious and unprecedented;) yet in a few months ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... scabbard.[104] There is no reason, however, for regarding it as anything more than a melodramatic incident characteristic of medieval romances. It reminds one of the following statement by Wilbur L. Cross, which, with the omission of the reference to "giants" and "Merlin," characterizes the Hrlfssaga quite accurately and shows how it harmonizes with the spirit of medieval literature of its kind, "It is true that they [i.e., the Arthurian romances] sought to ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... the assembly the nucleus of a party more extreme than itself, and the members of which, such as Chabot, Bazire, Merlin, were to the Girondists what Petion, Buzot, Robespierre, had been to the Left of the constituent. This was the commencement of the democratic faction which, without, served as auxiliary to the Gironde, and which managed ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... threatens transformation to fierceness. I fear I should tire of the mute, monotonous innocence of the lamb; I should ere long feel as burdensome the nestling dove which never stirred in my bosom; but my patience would exult in stilling the flutterings and training the energies of the restless merlin. In managing the wild instincts of the scarce manageable bete ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... that he was capable of handling an argument with a fiery dragon? He would have given much for a little previous experience of this sort of thing. It was too late now, but he wished he had had the forethought to get Merlin to put up a magic prescription for him, rendering him immune to dragon-bites. But did dragons bite? Or did they whack at you with their tails? Or just ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... are inclined, Saith Merlin,[16] who bamboozled are. The word, though rather unrefined, Has yet an energy we ill can spare; So by its aid I introduce my tale. A well-fed rat, rotund and hale, Not knowing either Fast or Lent, Disporting round a frog-pond ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... disappearance of Merlin would probably be found as imaginative as those of Arthur's removal, but they cannot be recovered; and what is singular enough, circumstances which originally belonged to the history of this famous bard, said to be the son of the Demon himself, have been transferred ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... neighbours he arrogates as much honour for being reader of an Inn of Chancery, as if it had been of his own house; for they, poor souls, take law and conscience, Court and Chancery, for all one. He learned to frame his case from putting riddles and imitating Merlin's prophecies, and to set all the Cross Row together by the ears; yet his whole law is not able to decide Lucan's one old controversy betwixt Tau and Sigma. He accounts no man of his cap and coat idle, but who trots not the circuit. He affects no life ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... him: which fact the Indian Vedas express, when they say, "He that can discriminate is the father of his father." And in our old British legends of Arthur and the Round-Table, his friend and counsellor, Merlin the Wise, is a babe found exposed in a basket by the river-side, and, though an infant of only a few days, he speaks to those who discover him, tells his name and history, and presently foretells the fate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... was something of an anachronism, and had as lofty a disregard for convention as had the ladies thronging the Court of Merlin. Nor, it must be admitted, was she herself any pronounced stickler for exactitude. Thus, she lopped half a dozen years off her age, allotted her father (whom she dubbed a "Spanish officer of distinction") a couple of brevet steps in rank, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... marsh-harriers and other birds weaker than itself. So bold is it that it frequently swoops down and carries off a dead or wounded duck shot by the sportsman. Another raptorial bird of which the nest is likely to be found in January is the Turumti or red-headed merlin (Aesalon chicquera). The nesting season of this ferocious pigmy extends from January to May, reaching its height during March in the United Provinces and during ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... that in the days of the famed Prince Arthur, who was king of Britain, in the year 516 there lived a great magician, called Merlin, the most learned and skilful enchanter in ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... received in Paris as American minister, literally as well as morally, with open arms, in that memorable scene when, in the presence and amid the cheers of the National Convention, the president, Merlin de Douai, imprinted upon his cheeks, in the name of France, the kiss of fraternity. Till he was recalled in the latter days of Washington's administration, Monroe was the representative not so much of the government to which he owed allegiance as of the faction ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... Account of the English Dramatick Poets (1691) ascribes to Shakespeare "about forty-six plays, all which except three are bound in one volume in Fol., printed London, 1685" (p. 454). The three plays not printed in the fourth folio are the Birth of Merlin, or the Child has lost his Father, a tragi-comedy, said by Langbaine to be by Shakespeare and Rowley; John King of England his troublesome Reign; and the Death of King John at Swinstead Abbey. Langbaine thinks that the last two "were first ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... subtle siren was left alone in the drawing-room with the aged clergyman she began weaving her spells around him as successfully as did the beautiful enchantress Vivien around the sage Merlin. ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... captured and dismantled it, and it has since fallen into almost complete decay, though part was occupied as a jail till the last century. In Caermarthen Church, Richard Steele the essayist is buried, while from the parade is a beautiful view up the Vale of Towy towards Merlin's Hill and Abergwili, which was the home of that renowned sage. Around the sweeping shores of Caermarthen Bay, about fifteen miles to the westward, is Tenby Castle, the town, now a watering-place, being singularly situated on the eastern and southern sides of a narrow rocky peninsula entirely ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... epistle of Symmachus, Ep. vii. al. vi. (see also Labbe and Cossart, t. iv. p. 1298.), the true reading is Ista quidem nego. How can this be verified? The epistle is not extant either in Crabbe or Merlin. Is the argument {198} of J. B. borne out by any good authority, either in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... moves her finger, lies the valley of Avalon, whither Arthur went to heal his overmastering sorrow, and where the air is always sweet with the smell of apple blossoms. In this deep wood lives Merlin, still weaving, as of old, the magic spells. There is the castle of the Grail, and as our eyes fall on it, suddenly there comes a hush, and we seem to hear the sublime antiphony, choir answering choir in heavenly melody, as Parsifal raises the ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... ordered scheme to which I must conform. After due consideration, however, I have decided to let it stand as it is, although the reader may find himself somewhat puzzled at the time element. I had best say that however the years may have dealt with Merlin Grainger, I myself was thinking always in the present. It was published in ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... heads the mavis flew, And the "ouzel-cock so black of hue;" And the "throstle," with his "note so true" (You remember what Shakespeare says—HE knew); And the soaring lark, that kept dropping through Like a bucket spilling in wells of blue; And the merlin—seen on heraldic panes— With legs as vague as ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... him a bit for being foolhardy, and said we should hear of his being caught and committed for trial. 'Why, they'll know the dog,' says he, 'and make him give evidence in court. I've known that done before now. Inspector Merlin nailed a ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... board, he saw Rowena regarding him with large eyes from the doorway. "We're now back to a point in time that precedes the theft of the Sangraal," he told her, "and we're relocated farther down the valley. But don't let it throw you. None other than Merlin himself built the magic apparatus you see before you in this room, and you know yourself that once he makes up his mind to it, Merlin ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... know about his literary history he wrote ‘Merlin and the Gleam.’ From his boyhood he had felt the magic of Merlin—that spirit of poetry—which bade him know his power and follow throughout his work a pure and high ideal, with a simple and single devotedness and a desire ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... family and rank was the poet—Merddin Wyllt—or "Merlin the Wild," who, wearing the chieftain's golden torc, fought at the battle of Arderydd, about A.D. 573, against Rhydderch Hael, that king of Alcluith or Dumbarton, who was the friend of St. Columba, and "the champion of the (Christian) faith," as Merlin himself styles him? And when ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... The Round Table; Gareth and Lynette; Marriage of Geraint; Geraint and Enid; Balin and Balan; Merlin and Vivien; Lancelot and Elaine, The Holy Grail; Pelleas and Ettarre; The last tournament; Guinevere; The passing of Arthur. Portions of the Arthur legends told in ...
— Lists of Stories and Programs for Story Hours • Various
... daybreak, leaving a letter for her companion, by which he learns that the page is none other than the lady whom he had seen in the Mall. Welborn and Olivia are eventually married. George Marteen's elder brother, Sir Merlin, a boon companion of Sir Morgan Blunder, is a rakehelly dog, who leads a wild town life to the great anger of old Sir Rowland. George, who whilst secretly leading a gay life under the name of Lejere, appears before his ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... time to study either language or character; so, after a plain dinner at the Merlin's Head, the chief inn of the place, I set out for the purpose of seeing the newspaper proprietor. Fortified by a letter of introduction and some testimonials, I entered his shop,—he was a bookseller and stationer,—and inquired for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... muddle-headed rubbish, half nonsense half knavery, as "The White King's Prophecy," "Supernatural Light," "The Starry Messenger," and "Annus Tenebrosus, or the Black Year." The rogue's starry mantle descended on his adopted son, a tailor, whom he named Merlin, junior. The credulity of the atheistical times of Charles II. is only equalled by that of our ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the time,' he says, in winding up that knotted skein of prophecy, which he leaves for Merlin to disentangle, for 'he lives before his time,' as he takes that ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... acts, and prescribe her duties, with something like the power of a god. In times past she would have tried to weave her spell around this strong man, in sheer wantonness of conquest, as Vivian threw her enchantments over Merlin; now she was conscious only of a strange willingness to submit to him, to take his yoke, and bow down under ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
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