In the wood by the side of the fountain.”
A warning voice bids him turn back and not to seek the forbidden knowledge. The cress, the golden grass, the oak branch, and the red egg of the marine serpent are not for him. “Merlin! Merlin!” cries the voice,
“Retrace thy steps,
There is no diviner but God.”
It is like a moral message from Goethe’s Faust.
There is no doubt that Merlin’s death, which is no death, but a blind grovelling and eternal uselessness, was the mark of scorn put upon the magician who might have been prepotent, but who prostituted his powers—a feebleness and a degradation which were intolerable to the sturdy race who prized courage above all other qualities, and were incapable of realising the meaning of defeat or despair. That the counsellor should himself turn fool, and that the man of supernatural gifts should be prone to the weakness of nature, would be obnoxious to the Celtic imagination, and have its sequel in ribald allusion and endless taunts. The disaster which overtakes Merlin is one fitting for the coward or the buffoon, and is a fate altogether foreign to the ancient idea of that which was fitting for the hero, the bard, or the sage. It is noticeable that all the former services of Merlin are forgotten in judging him upon the closing despicable episode in his career and consigning him to timeless indolence and impotence. Shorn of his strength, a prisoner, living but “lost to use and fame,” Mage Merlin in his cave, victim to his own folly and a woman’s wiles, awaits the last doom.