The most marvellous feature of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s story of Arthur is the part played by the wizard Merlin in the events that led to Arthur’s birth. It is in Geoffrey’s _History_ that we get, so far as is known, the first definite association of Merlin with the Arthurian legends. In subsequent romance Merlin stands in the first file of Arthurian characters, and his name is given to a group of romances as important as any of those dealing with the adventures of the great knights mentioned in the last few pages. In Welsh tradition Merlin, or Myrddin, was famous as both a bard and a magician, but the poetical compositions which bear his name may safely be taken as spurious. Geoffrey exalts him as a prophet as well, and the ‘Prophecies of Merlin’ contributed largely to the renown of the _History of the Kings of Britain_. Geoffrey’s authorship is sometimes claimed for a Latin poem called the _Vita Merlini_, and composed about 1148, which tells much about the enchanter that is not always easy to reconcile with the account of him given in the _History_. The chief French romantic works dealing with the Merlin legend are a fragmentary poem, dating from the end of the twelfth century, and supposed to be by Robert de Borron, and the prose romance of _Merlin_, which exists in two forms known as the “ordinary” _Merlin_ and the _Suite de Merlin_, of the latter of which Malory’s first four books are an abridgment. In these romances we first read of the enchanter’s own enchantment, how he was, in Malory’s words, “assotted and doted” on a “damosel of the lake,”--Ninien, or Nimue, a name that in the latest forms of the story comes to be Vivien. In these early French versions of the Merlin legend, also, appears the first suggestion that Modred was Arthur’s son. When the wife of King Lot,--the daughter of Igerne by her first husband,--came to King Arthur’s court soon after his coronation, Arthur fell in love with her, with the result that Modred was born. Modred’s rebellion, and the tragic end of Arthur himself, were thus represented as a just retribution for the king’s misconduct.