correspondence with Erasmus is partly included in the editions of
the Letters of Erasmus, and much of his correspondence is calendared
in Gairdner’s Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., the letters written
to his family in his last days being found in vol. viii.
The Mirror of Vertue in Worldly Greatness; or, the Life of Syr Thomas More was written by his son-in-law William Roper about the end of Mary’s reign. It was preserved in MS. during the reign of Elizabeth, and handed down in copies, many of which were carelessly made. It was not given to the press till 1626, with the date of Paris. Reprints were made by Hearne (Oxford, 1716), by Lewis (1729, 1731), who added an appendix of documents, and by Singer (1817, 1822) and for the King’s Library (1902). Roper’s Life is the source of all the many subsequent biographies; More’s Life in MS. (Harleian 6253 and elsewhere), anonymous, but by Nicolas Harpsfield, was also written in Mary’s reign. All that is material in this MS. is taken from Roper. Another anonymous Life, written in 1599, printed in Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical Biography, ii. 43–185, is chiefly compiled from Roper and Harpsfield. The preface is signed Ro. Ba. (Robert Barnstaple?). William Rastell’s Life of More, of which fragments are preserved in the Arundel Coll. (Brit. Mus.), is, unhappily, lost. Thomas Stapleton (Tres Thomae, s. res gestae S. Thomae apostoli, S. Thomae archiepiscopi Cantuariensis, Thomae Mori (Douay, 1588; Cologne, 1612) and the Vita Thomae Mori (separately), (Gratz, 1689) translates Roper, interweaving what material he could find scattered through More’s works and letters and the notices of him in the writings of his contemporaries. Cresacre More, great-grandson of Sir Thomas, compiled a new life about the year 1627. It was printed at Paris without date, but, according to the editor, J. Hunter, in 1631. The title of this edition is: The Life and Death of Sir Thos. More, Lord High Chancellour of England, and with new title-page, 1642, 1726, 1828. This biography is cited by the subsequent biographers as an independent authority. But it is almost entirely borrowed from Roper and Stapleton. The additions made have sometimes the appearance of rhetorical amplifications of Roper’s simple statements. At other times they are decorative miracles. The whole is couched in that strain of devotional exaggeration in which the lives of the saints are usually composed. The author seems to imply that he had received supernatural communications from the spirit of his ancestor. Already, only eighty years after More’s execution, hagiography had taken possession of the facts and was transmuting them into an edifying legend. Cresacre More’s Life cannot be alleged as evidence for any facts which are not otherwise vouched. It has been remarked by Hunter that More’s life and works have been all along manipulated for political purposes, and in the interest of the holy see. In Mary’s reign, and in the tide of Catholic reaction, Roper and Harpsfield wrote lives of him; Ellis Heywood dedicated his Il Moro (Florence, 1556) a fanciful account of More’s life at Chelsea, to Cardinal Pole, and Tottell reprinted the folio of his English works. Stapleton prepared his Tres Thomae in 1588, when the recovery of England to the see of Rome was looked for by the Spanish invasion. In 1599, when there was a prospect of a disputed succession, the anonymous Life by Ro. Ba. was composed; and soon after Charles had allied himself with a Catholic, the Life by Cresacre More issued from the press. Hunter might have added that Stapleton was being reprinted at Gratz at the time when the conversion of England was expected from James II. The later lives of Sir Thomas More have been numerous, the best being those by G. T. Rudhart Thomas Morus, aus den Quellen bearbeitet (Nuremberg, 1829); by T. E. Bridgett, Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More (1891); and by W. H. Hutton, Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More (1891). Other lives are by J. Hoddesdon (London, 1652, 1662); by Sir A. Cayley (2 vols., London, 1808); by Sir J. Mackintosh, Lardner’s Cab. Cyclop. (London, 1831, 1844); and in More’s Works (London, 1845); by Lord Campbell in Lives of the Chancellors (vol. i., 1848–1850); by D. Nisard in Renaissance et Réforme (Paris, 1855); by Baumstark (Freiburg, 1879); by F. Seebohm in the Oxford Reformers of 1498 (London, 1867). A biographical study on More’s Latin poems is Philomorus, by J. H. Marsden (2nd ed., London, 1878). Cf. John Bruce, “Inedited documents rel. to the imprisonment and condemnation of Sir T. More,” in Archaeologia xxvii. 361–374); Southey, Sir Thomas More, or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society (London, 1829); Anne Manning, The Household of Sir Thomas More (1851, reprinted in King’s Novels, 1905); S. Lee, Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century (1904). The tragedy of Sir Thomas More, edited by A. Dyce for the Shakespeare Society in 1844, and connected by some commentators with Shakespeare, was written about 1590, and therefore gives a nearly contemporary view of More. A later playwright, James Hurdis, made More’s career the subject of a play in 1792. (M. P.)
MORÉAS, JEAN (1856–1910), French poet, born at Athens
on the 15th of April 1856, was the grandson of Papadiamantopoulos,
one of the heroes of Missolonghi. He was one of the
leaders of the symbolist movement in French poetry, advocating
a relaxation of the stringent rules governing French verse;
but his early volumes of poems, Les Syrtes (1884), Les Cantilènes
(1886), and Le Pèlerin passionné (1891) won recognition beyond
the limits of this school. In the XIXᵉ siècle (August 11,
1885) he formulated the principles of the symbolists, defending
them from the appellation of “decadent,” and in the literary
supplement of the Figaro (Sep. 18, 1886) he published a manifesto
justifying the innovations of the new school as the natural
development of the prosody of Baudelaire, Mallarmé and
Verlaine. Le Pèlerin passionné was sympathetically reviewed
by Anatole France. As time went on he repudiated the licence
claimed by the symbolist’s, and became the leader of an offshoot
from the main body known as the école romane, the chief members
of which are Raymond de la Tailhéde, Maurice du Plessys, Ernest
Raynaud, and the critic Charles Maurras. Moréas and his
new followers returned to the traditional severity of French
versification, and to the classical and antique tradition. His
later volumes are Poésies, 1886–1896 (1898), and Stances
(6 vols., complete ed. 1905), Histoire de Jean de Paris, roi de France
(1902), Voyage en Grèce en 1897 (1902), Contes de la vieille France
(1903), and a classic drama in verse, Iphigénie à Aulis
(1904), in closing imitation of Euripides, which was represented
on the 24th of August 1903 in the ancient theatre of
Orange, and subsequently at the Odéon in Paris. He died on the 31st of March 1910.
See Anatole France, La Vie littéraire (4th ser., 1892); A. van Bever and P. Léautaud, Poètes d’aujourd’hui, 1880–1900 (11th ed., 1905); P. Berthelot, art. “Symbolisme” in La Grande encyclopédie; and J. de Gourmont, Jean Moréas, biographies critique (1905).
MOREAU, GUSTAVE (1826–1898), French painter, was born
in Paris on the 6th of April 1826. His father was an architect,
who, discerning the lad’s promise, sent him to study under
Picot, a second-rate artist but clever teacher. The only influence
which really affected Moreau’s development was that of the
painter Chassériau (1819–1857), with whom he was intimate
when they both lived in the Rue Frochot, and of whom we find
reminiscences even in his later works. Moreau’s first picture
was a “Pietà” (1852), now in the cathedral at Angoulême. In
the Salon of 1853 he exhibited a “Scene from the Song of Songs”
(now in the Dijon Museum) and the “Death of Darius” (in
the Moreau Gallery, Paris), both conspicuously under the
influence of Chassériau. To the Great Exhibition of 1855
he sent the “Athenians with the Minotaur” (in the Museum
at Bourg-en-Bresse) and “Moses putting off his Sandals within
Sight of the Promised Land.” “Oedipus and the Sphinx,”
begun in 1862, and exhibited at the Salon of 1864, marked the
beginning of his best period, during which he chose his subjects
from history, religion, legend and fancy. In 1865 he exhibited
“Medea and Jason” and “The Young Man and Death”;
in 1866, the “Head of Orpheus” (in the Luxembourg Gallery);
“Hesiod and the Muse,” a drawing, and “The Peri,” a drawing;
“Prometheus” (in the Moreau Gallery); “Jupiter and Europa,”
a “Pietà,” and “The Saint and the Poet,” in 1869. After
working in obscurity for seven years, he reappeared at the Salon
in 1876 with “Hercules and the Hydra,” “Saint Sebastian,”
“Salome Dancing” (presented to the Luxembourg by M. Hayem);
and in 1878 with “The Sphinx’s Riddle solved.”
“Jacob,” and “Moses on the Nile.” Moreau exhibited for the
last time at the Salon of 1880, when he contributed “Helen”
and “Galatea”; to the Great Exhibition of 1889 he again sent
the “Galatea” and “The Young Man and Death.” He took
prize medals at the Salon in 1864, 1865, 1869 and 1878. He
was made knight of the Legion of Honour in 1875 and officer
in 1883. He succeeded Delaunay as professor at the École
des Beaux Arts, and his teaching was highly popular. When
he died, on the 18th of April 1898, he bequeathed to the state
his house, containing about 8000 pictures, water-colours,
cartoons and drawings, which form the Moreau Gallery, one
of the best organized collections in Paris, arranged by M. Rupp,
his executor, and, together with Delaunay and Fromentin, one
of his closest friends.
See Ary Renan, Moreau (Paris, 1900); Paul Flat, Le Musée Gustave Moreau (Paris, 1900).
MOREAU, HÉGÉSIPPE (1810–1838), French lyric poet, was born in Paris on the 9th of April 1810. In his early youth his parents, who were poor, migrated to Provins, where the
