Sir Thomas 1478-1535 More

More's English works were collected by William Rastell and pub lished as The Worke of Sir Thomas More Knyght by Cawood, Waly and Tottel in 1557 ; his Latin works Thomae Mori . . . Lucubrationes were partially collected at Basle 1563 and in 1566 (omnia opera) at Louvain; a fuller edition drawn chiefly from these two appeared at Frankfort and Leipzig in 1689. His 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. 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 Mon (Douay, 1588; Cologne, 1612) and the Vita Thomae Mori (separately) (Gratz, 5689) 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. The later lives of Sir Thomas More have been numerous the best being those by G. T. Rudhart Thomas Monts, aus den Quellen bearbeitet (Nuremberg, 5829) ; by Father T. E. Bridgett,

Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More (1891) ; and by W. H. Hutton, Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More (1891). Anne Manning's The Household of Sir Thomas More (1851, reprinted in King's Novels, 1905) is an attractive reconstruction. 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.

MOREAS, JEAN

(1856-191o), French poet, born at Athens, was the grandson of Papadiomontopoulos, one of the heroes of Missolonghi. He was one of the leaders of the symbolist move ment in French poetry, but his early volumes of poems, Les Syrtes (1884), Les CanaMlles (1886), and Le Merin passionne (1891) won recognition beyond the limits of this school. In the XIXe siecle (Aug. II, 1885) he formulated the principles of the symbolists, defending them from the appellation of "decadent," and in the literary supplement of the Figaro (Sept. 18, 1886) he published a manifesto justifying the innovations of the new school as the natural development of the prosody of Baudelaire, Mal larme and Verlaine. As time went on he repudiated the licence claimed by the symbolists, and became the leader of an offshoot from the main body known as the ecole romane, the chief mem bers of which were Raymond de la Tailhede, Maurice du Plessys, Ernest Raynaud, and Charles Maurras. Moreas and his new followers returned to the traditional severity of French versifica tion, and to the classical and antique tradition. His later volumes are Poesies, 1886-1896 (1898), Stances (6 vols., complete ed. 1905), indispensable for the student of his work, Histoire de Jean de Paris, roi de France (1902), Voyage en Grece en 1897 (1902), Contes de la vieille France (1903), and a classic drama in verse, 1phigenie a Aulis (19o4), in close imitation of Euripides, which was presented, Aug. 24, 1903, in the ancient theatre of Orange, and subsequently at the Odeon in Paris. He died March 31, 191o.

See Anatole France, La Vie litteraire (4th ser., 1892) ; A. van Bever and P. Leautaud, Poetes d'aujourd'hui, 188o-igoo (nth ed., 1905) ; P. Berthelot, art. "Symbolisme" in La Grande encyclopedze; and J. de Gourmont, Jean Moreas, biographic critique (1905).