" This lady was one ofMerlin's pupils, but the one whom he loved most and instructed the mostwas Nimiane or Vivian, already mentioned, who seems to have been to himrather a beloved younger sister than anything else, and he taught her somuch that "at last he might hold himself a fool," the legend says, "andever she inquired of his cunning and his mysteries, each thing by itself,and he let her know all, and she wrote all that he said, as she was welllearned in clergie (reading and writing), and learned lightly all thatMerlin taught her; and when they parted, each of them commended the otherto God full tenderly."The form of the enchanter Merlin disappeared from view, at last--for thelegends do not admit that his life ever ended--across the sea whence hecame.The poet Tennyson, to be sure, describes Nimiane or Vivian--the Lady ofthe Lake--as a wicked enchantress who persuaded Merlin to betray hissecrets to her, and then shut him up in an oak tree forever. But otherlegends seem to show that Tennyson does great injustice to the Lady of theLake, that she really loved Merlin even in his age, and thereforepersuaded him to show her how to make a tower without walls,--that theymight dwell there together in peace, and address each other only asBrother and Sister. When he had told her, he fell asleep with his head inher lap, and she wove a spell nine times around his head, and the towerbecame the strongest in the world.
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