that she could read and write, like the clergy), and of astronomy could
she enough, for Merlin had her taught, and she learned much of egromancy
(magic or necromancy); and the best work-woman she was with her hands that
any man knew in any land, and she had the fairest head and the fairest
hands under heaven, and shoulders well-shapen; and she had fair eloquence
and full debonair she was, as long as she was in her right wit; and when
she was wroth with any man, she was evil to meet." This lady was one of
Merlin's pupils, but the one whom he loved most and instructed the most
was Nimiane or Vivian, already mentioned, who seems to have been to him
rather a beloved younger sister than anything else, and he taught her so
much that "at last he might hold himself a fool," the legend says, "and
ever 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 well
learned in clergie (reading and writing), and learned lightly all that
Merlin taught her; and when they parted, each of them commended the other
to God full tenderly."

The form of the enchanter Merlin disappeared from view, at last--for the
legends do not admit that his life ever ended--across the sea whence he
came.

The poet Tennyson, to be sure, describes Nimiane or Vivian--the Lady of
the Lake--as a wicked enchantress who persuaded Merlin to betray his
secrets to her, and then shut him up in an oak tree forever. But other
legends seem to show that Tennyson does great injustice to the Lady of the
Lake, that she really loved Merlin even in his age, and therefore
persuaded him to show her how to make a tower without walls,--that they
might dwell there together in peace, and address each other only as
Brother and Sister. When he had told her, he fell asleep with his head in
her lap, and she wove a spell nine times around his head, and the tower