See Abbé Legendre, Vita Francisci de Harlay (Paris, 1720) and Éloge de Harlay (1695); Saint-Simon, Mémoires (vol. ii., ed. A. de Boislisle, 1879), and numerous references in the Lettres of Mme de Sévigné.
HARLECH (perhaps for Hardd lech, fair slate, or Harleigh, an Anglicized variant), a town of Merionethshire, Wales, 38 m. from Aberystwyth, and 29 from Carnarvon on the Cambrian railway. Pop. 900. Ruins of a fortress crown the rock of Harlech, about half a mile from the sea. Discovery of Roman coins makes it probable that it was once occupied by the Romans. In the 3rd century Bronwen (white bosom), daughter of Bran Fendigaid (the blessed), is said to have stayed here, perhaps by force; and there was here a tower, called Twr Bronwen, and replaced about A.D. 550 by the building of Maelgwyn Gwynedd, prince of North Wales. In the early 10th century, Harlech castle was, apparently, repaired by Colwyn, lord of Ardudwy, founder of one of the fifteen North Wales tribes, and thence called Caer Colwyn. The present structure dates, like many others in the principality, from Edward I., perhaps even from the plans of the architect of Carnarvon and Conway castles, but with the retention of old portions. It is thought to have been square, each side measuring some 210 ft., with towers and turrets. Glendower held it for four years. Here, in 1460, Margaret, wife of Henry VI., defeated at Northampton, took refuge. Dafydd ap Ieuan ap Einion held it for the Lancastrians, until famine, rather than Edward IV., made him surrender. From this time is said to date the air “March of the men of Harlech” (Rhyfelgerdd gwyr Harlech). The castle was alternately Roundhead and Cavalier in the civil war. Edward I. made Harlech a free borough, and it was formerly the county town. It is in the parish of Llandanwg (pop. in 1901, 931). Though interesting from an antiquarian point of view, the district around, especially Dyffryn Ardudwy (the valley), is dreary and desolate, e.g. Drws (the door of) Ardudwy, Rhinog fawr and Rhinog fach (cliffs); an exception is the verdant Cwm bychan (little combe or hollow). The Meini gwyr Ardudwy (stones of the men of Ardudwy) possibly mark the site of a fight.
HARLEQUIN, in modern pantomime, the posturing and acrobatic character who gives his name to the “harlequinade,” attired in mask and parti-coloured and spangled tights, and provided with a sword like a bat, by which, himself invisible, he works wonders. It has generally been assumed that Harlequin was transferred to France from the “Arlecchino” of Italian medieval and Renaissance popular comedy; but Dr Driesen in his Ursprung des Harlekins (Berlin, 1904) shows that this is incorrect. An old French “Harlekin” (Herlekin, Hellequin and other variants) is found in folk-literature as early as 1100; he had already become proverbial as a ragamuffin of a demoniacal appearance and character; in 1262 a number of harlekins appear in a play by Adam de la Halle as the intermediaries of King Hellekin, prince of Fairyland, in courting Morgan le Fay; and it was not till much later that the French Harlekin was transformed into the Italian Arlecchino. In his typical French form down to the time of Gottsched, he was a spirit of the air, deriving thence his invisibility and his characteristically light and aery whirlings. Subsequently he returned from the Italian to the French stage, being imported by Marivaux into light comedy; and his various attributes gradually became amalgamated into the latter form taken in pantomime.
HARLESS (originally Harles), GOTTLIEB CHRISTOPH (1738-1815), German classical scholar and bibliographer, was born at Culmbach in Bavaria on the 21st of June 1738. He studied at Halle, Erlangen and Jena. In 1765 he was appointed professor of oriental languages and eloquence at the Gymnasium Casimirianum in Coburg, in 1770 professor of poetry and eloquence at Erlangen, and in 1776 librarian of the university. He held his professorship for forty-five years till his death on the 2nd of November 1815. Harless was an extremely prolific writer. His numerous editions of classical authors, deficient in originality and critical judgment, although valuable at the time as giving the student the results of the labours of earlier scholars, are now entirely superseded. But he will always be remembered for his meritorious work in connexion with the great Bibliotheca Graeca of J. A. Fabricius, of which he published a new and revised edition (12 vols., 1790-1809, not quite completed),—a task for which he was peculiarly qualified. He also wrote much on the history and bibliography of Greek and Latin literature.
His life was written by his son, Johann Christian Friedrich Harless (1818).
HARLESS, GOTTLIEB CHRISTOPH ADOLF VON (1806-1879), German divine, was born at Nuremberg on the 21st of November 1806, and was educated at the universities of Erlangen and Halle. He was appointed professor of theology at Erlangen in 1836 and at Leipzig in 1845. He was a strong Lutheran and exercised a powerful influence in that direction as court preacher in Dresden and as president of the Protestant consistory at Munich. His chief works were Theologische Encyklopädie und Methodologie (1837) and Die christliche Ethik (1842, Eng. trans. 1868). He died on the 5th of September 1879, having, a few years earlier, written an autobiography under the title Bruchstücke aus dem Leben eines süddeutschen Theologen.