Chapter Clack-Dish to Clarke of C by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Clarinda, a merry, good-humoured, high-spirited lady, in love with Charles Frankly. The madcap Ranger is her cousin.—Dr. Hoadly: The Suspicious Husband (1747).

Clarinda of Robert Burns was Mrs. Maclehose, who was alive in 1833.

Clarion, the son and heir of Muscarol. He was the fairest and most prosperous of all the race of flies. Aragnol, the son of Arachnê (the spider), entertained a deep and secret hatred of the young prince, and set himself to destroy him; so, weaving a most curious net, Clarion was soon caught, and Aragnol gave him his death-wound by piercing him under the left wing.—Spenser: Muiopot mos, or The Butterfly’s Fate (1590).

Clarissa, wife of Gripe the scrivener. A lazy, lackadaisical, fine city lady, who thinks “a woman must be of mechanic mould who is either troubled or pleased with anything her husband can do” (act i. 3). She has “wit and beauty, with a fool to her husband,” but though “fool,” a hard, grasping, mean old hunks.

“I have more subjects for spleen than one. Is it not a most horrible thing that I should be a scrivener’s wife? …Don’t you think nature designed me for something plus elevée? Why, I dare abuse nobody. I’m afraid to affront people,…or to ruin their reputations. …I dare not raise the lie of a man, though he neglects to make love to me; nor report a woman to be a fool, though she is handsomer than I. In short, I dare not so much as bid my footman kick people out of doors, though they come to dun me for what I owe them.”—Sir J. Vanbrugh: The Confederacy, i. 3 (1695).

Clarissa, sister of Beverley, plighted to George Bellmont.—Murphy: All in the Wrong (1761).

Clarissa Harlowe. (See Harlowe.)

Clarke (The Rev. T.), the pseudonym of John Gall, the novelist (1779–1839).

Clarke (The Rev. C. C.), one of the many pseudonyms of sir Richard Phillips, author of The Hundred Wonders of the World (1818), Readings in Natural Philosophy, etc.