1873.

=Me'rida= (_Marchioness_), betrothed to Count Valantia.--Mrs. Inchbald,
_Child of Nature_.

=Meridarpax=, the pride of mice.

Now nobly towering o'er the rest, appears
A gallant prince that far transcends his years;
Pride of his sire, and glory of his house,
And more a Mars in combat than a mouse;
His action bold, robust his ample frame,
And Meridarpax his resounding name.

Parnell, _The Battle of the Frogs and Mice_, iii. (about 1712).

=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 Perm[=o]n[^e]s, 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.)

[Asterism] Merlin made "the fountain of love,"