Har´lowe

( Clari a ), a young lady, who, to avoid a marriage to which her heart cannot consent, but to which she is urged by her parents, casts herself on the protection of a lover, who most scandalously abuses the confidence reposed in him. He afterwards proposes marriage; but she rejects his proposal, and retires to a solitary dwelling, where she pines to death with grief and shame.—S. Richardson, The History of Clari a Harlowe (1749). The dignity of Clari a under her disgrace... reminds us of the saying of the ancient poet, that a good man struggling with the tide of adversity, and surmounting it, is a sight upon which the immortal gods might look down with pleasure.—Sir W. Scott. The moral elevation of this heroine, the saintly purity which she preserves amidst scenes of the deepest depravity and the most seductive gaiety, and the never-failing sweetne and benevolence of her temper, render Clari a one of the brightest triumphs of the whole range of imaginative literature.—Chambers, English Literature , ii. 161.