=Merid´ies= or “Noonday Sun,” one of the four brothers who kept the passages of Castle Perilous. So Tennyson has named him; but in the _History of Prince Arthur_, he is called “Sir Permōnês, the Red Knight.”--Tennyson, _Idylls_ (“Gareth and Lynette”); Sir T. Malory, _History of Prince Arthur_, i. 129 (1470). =Merion= (_James_), New York lawyer, who plays the lover to three women, honestly believing himself enamoured of each.--Ellen Olney Kirke, _A Daughter of Eve_ (1889). =Merle= (_Madame_), a plausible woman with an ambition to be thought the incarnation of propriety, who carries with her the knowledge that she is the mistress of a man who has a wife, and that Madame Merle’s illegitimate daughter is brought up by the step-mother, who knows nothing of the shameful story.--Henry James, _The Portrait of a Lady_ (1881). =Merlin= (_Ambrose_), prince of enchanters. His mother was Matilda, a nun, who was seduced by a “guileful sprite,” or incubus, “half angel and half man, dwelling in mid-air betwixt the earth and moon.” Some say his mother was the daughter of Pubidius, lord of Math-traval, in Wales; and others make her a princess, daughter of Demetius, king of Demet´ia. Blaise baptized the infant, and thus rescued it from the powers of darkness. Merlin died spell-bound, but the author and manner of his death are given differently by different authorities. Thus, in the _History of Prince Arthur_ (Sir T. Malory, 1470), we are told that the enchantress Nimue or Ninive inveigled the old man, and “covered him with a stone under a rock.” In the _Morte d’Arthur_ it is said “he sleeps and sighs in an old tree, spell-bound by Vivien.” Tennyson, in his _Idylls_ (“Vivien”), says that Vivien induced Merlin to take shelter from a storm in a hollow oak tree, and left him spell-bound. Others say he was spell-bound in a hawthorn bush, but this is evidently a blunder. (See MERLIN THE WILD.) ⁂ Merlin made “the fountain of love,” mentioned by Bojardo in _Orlando Innamorato_, l. 3. Ariosto, in _Orlando Furioso_, says he made “one of the four fountains” (ch. xxvi). He also made the Round Table at Carduel for 150 knights, which came into the possession of King Arthur on his marriage with Queen Guinever; and brought from Ireland the stones of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. Allusion is made to him in the _Faëry Queen_; in Ellis’s _Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances_; in Drayton’s _Polyolbion_; in _Kenilworth_, by Sir W. Scott, etc. T. Heywood has attempted to show the fulfilment of Merlin’s prophecies. Of Merlin and his skill what region doth not hear?... Who of a British nymph was gotten, whilst she played With a seducing sprite ... But all Demetia thro’ there was not found her peer. Drayton, _Polyolbion_, v. (1612). _Merlin_ (_The English_), W. Lilly, the astrologer, who assumed the _nom de plume_ of “Mer´linus Anglĭcus” (1602-1681).