CEL’ADON AND AME’LIA, lovers of matchless beauty, and most devoted to each other.  Being overtaken by a thunderstorm, Amelia became alarmed, but Celadon, folding his arm about her, said, “’Tis safety to be near thee, sure;” but while he spoke, Amelia was struck by lightning and fell dead in his arms.—­Thomson, The Seasons ("Summer,” 1727).

CELE’NO OR CELSAE’NO, chief of the harpies.

There on a craggy stone Celeno hung, and made his direful moan.  Giles Fletcher, Christ’s Triumph [on Earth] (1610).

CE’LIA, daughter of Frederick the usurping duke, and cousin of Ros’alind, daughter of the banished duke.  When Rosalind was driven from her uncle’s court, Celia determined to go with her to the forest of Arden to seek out the banished duke, and for security’s sake Rosalind dressed in boy’s clothes and called herself “Gan’ymede,” while Celia dressed as a peasant girl and called herself “Aliena.”  When they reached Arden they lodged for a time in a shepherd’s hut, and Oliver de Boys was sent to tell them that his brother Orlando was hurt and could not come to the hut as usual.  Oliver and Celia fell in love with each other, and their wedding-day was fixed.  Ganymede resumed the dress of Bosalind, and the two brothers married at the same time.—­Shakespeare, As You Like It (1598).

Ce’lia, a girl of sixteen, in Whitehead’s comedy of The School for Lovers.  It was written expressly for Mrs. Cibber, daughter of Dr. Arne.

Mrs. Cibber was at the time more than fifty years old, but the uncommon symmetry and exact proportion in her form, with her singular vivacity, enabled her to represent the character of “Celia” with all the juvenile appearance marked by the author.—­Percy, Anecdotes.

Ce’lia, a poetical name for any lady-love:  as “Would you know my Celia’s charms ...?” Not unfrequently Streph’on is the wooer when Celia is the wooed.  Thomas Carew calls his “sweet sweeting” Celia; her real name is not known.

Ce’lia (Dame), mother of Faith, Hope, and Charity.  She lived in the hospice called Holiness. (Celia is from the Latin, coelum, “heaven.")—­Spenser, Faery Queen, i. 10 (1590).

CELIA SHAW, a gentle-hearted mountain girl who, learning that her father and his clan intend to “clean out” a family fifteen miles up the mountain, steals out on a snowy night and makes her way to their hut to warn them of their danger.  She takes cold on the fearful journey, and dies of consumption.—­Charles Egbert Craddock, In the Tennessee Mountains (1884).

CELIMENE (3_syl_.), a coquette courted by Alceste (2 syl.) the “misanthrope” (a really good man, both upright and manly, but blunt in behavior, rude in speech, and unconventional).  Alceste wants Celimene to forsake society and live with him in seclusion; this she refuses to do, and he replies, as you cannot find, “tout en moi, comme moi tout en vous, allez, je vous refuse.”  He then proposes to her cousin Eliante (3 syl.), but Eliante tells him she is already engaged to his friend Philinte (2 syl), and so the play ends.—­Moliere, Le Misanthrope (1666).