“This Spring was one of those four fountains rare,
Of those in France produced by Merlin’s sleight,
Encompassed round about with marble fair,
Shining and polished, and than milk more white. 
There in the stones choice figures chiseled were,
By that magician’s god-like labour dight;
Some voice was wanting, these you might have thought
Were living, and with nerve and spirit fraught.” 

          
                                                ARIOSTO, Orlando Furioso (Rose’s tr.).

Merlin was also supposed to have made all kinds of magic objects, among which the poets often mention a cup.  This would, reveal whether the drinker had led a pure life, for it always overflowed when touched by polluted lips.  He was also the artificer of Arthur’s armor, which no weapon could pierce, and of a magic mirror in which one could see whatever one wished.

“It Merlin was, which whylome did excel
All living wightes in might of magicke spell: 
Both shield, and sword, and armour all he wrought
For this young Prince, when first to armes he fell.” 

          
                                                              SPENSER, Faerie Queene.

[Sidenote:  Merlin and Vivian.] Merlin, in spite of all his knowledge and skill, yielded often to the entreaties of his fair mistress, Vivian, the Lady of the Lake.  She followed him wherever he went, and made countless efforts to learn all his arts and to discover all his magic spells.  In order to beguile the aged Merlin into telling her all she wished to know, Vivian pretended great devotion, which is admirably related in Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King,” one of which treats exclusively of Merlin and Vivian.

This enchantress even went with him to the fairy-haunted forest of Broceliande, in Brittany, where she finally beguiled him into revealing a magic spell whereby a human being could be inclosed in a hawthorn tree, where he must dwell forever.

    “And then she follow’d Merlin all the way,
    E’en to the wild woods of Broceliande. 
    For Merlin once had told her of a charm,
    The which if any wrought on any one
    With woven paces and with waving arms,
    The man so wrought on ever seem’d to lie
    Closed in the four walls of a hollow tower,
    From which was no escape for evermore;
    And none could find that man for evermore,
    Nor could he see but him who wrought the charm
    Coming and going; and he lay as dead
    And lost to life and use and name and fame.” 
                                  TENNYSON, Merlin and Vivien.

This charm having been duly revealed, the Lady of the Lake, weary of her aged lover, and wishing to rid herself of him forever now that she had learned all he could teach her, lured him into the depths of the forest.  There, by aid of the spell, she imprisoned him in a thorn bush, whence, if the tales of the Breton peasants can be believed, his voice can be heard to issue from time to time.