MOOREA 



MOORS 



301 



the States and in Canada, returned in a twelve- 

 month to England the democratic notions of his 

 Dublin days toned down by his transatlantic 

 experience." For his Odes and Epistles (1806) he 

 was sharply taken to task in the Edinburgh. The 

 bulletless duel with Jeffrey was the consequence, 

 over which Byron made so merry, but which left 

 the non-combatants fast friends "for life. In 1811 

 he married an actress, good Bessy Dyke (1793- 

 1865), and, after living successively in Leicester- 

 shire, in Derbyshire, and at Hornsey near London, 

 in 1817 they settled at Sloperton Cpttajje, near 

 Bowood, Lord Lansdowne's seat, in Wiltshire. 



Meanwhile, among other fugitive pieces, Moore 

 had published the earlier of the Irish Melodies (ten 

 parts. 1807-34) and The Twopenny Post-bag ( 1812), 

 whose tropes at once glittered and stung. Now he 

 l>ecame anxious to emulate his brother-poets, who 

 published in qnartos. He fixed on an oriental 

 subject, anil in 1817 the long-expected Lalla Rookh 

 appeared, dazzling as a tireHy ; and the whole 

 English world applauded. After the publication 

 he went with Rogers to Paris, and there wrote The 

 t' nil iff Family ( 1818). For Lalla Rtmkh the Long- 

 mans paid him 3000 guineas ; the Irish Melodies 

 brought in 500 a year ; but Moore had ' a generous 

 contempt for money ; ' and almut this time his 

 Bermuda demit y embezzled 6000. Moore's liability 

 was reduced by compromise to 1000, which he 

 ultimately paid by his pen ; but in 1819, to avoid 

 arrest, he' went to Italy with Lord John Russell. 

 He spent five days at Venice with Byron ( his friend 

 sinre 1811), went on with Chan trey to Rome, and 

 then with his family fixed In- abode in Paris, where 

 lie wrote The Loves of the Angels ( 1823) and a prose 

 romance. The /.'/"'"" (1827). He returned in 

 1822 to Sloperton ; and here, except for occasional 

 'junketings' to London, Scotland, :in<l el.-ewhere, 

 hf passeil hi< last thirty years. To those years 

 belong the Mrmoirs of Captain llork (1824), the 

 /li.itury of Ireland ( 1827), and the Lives of Sheri- 

 dan (1825), Byron (q.v., 1830), and Lord Edward 

 Fitzgerald ( 1831 ). In 1835 he received a pension 

 of 300, hut his last days were clouded by 

 sorrow ami suffering the loss of his two sons, and 

 the decay of his mental faculties. ' I am sinking,' 

 lie writes to Rogers in 1847, ' into a mere vegetable." 

 He died on 2T>tli February 1852, and was buried in 

 Bromham Churchyard. 



Moon- in his lifetime was |H>pular as only Byron ; 

 but to-day In- ranks far below Wordsworth, Shelley, 

 Keats. Mi> must- was a spangled dancing-girl 

 li^'lit, airy, graceful, but soulless. The Loves of the 

 .iiiiirln, iiis most ambitious effort, falls beneath 

 veil the Byronic standard ; Lalla liooklt, again, is 

 brilliant, but fatiguing. He is best in his lyrics ; 

 iind even in them there is a certain sameness, with 

 their eternal ' love of one's country, of the wine of 

 other countries, and of the women of all countries.' 

 See his Mi'Hitiirx. Inuninl, mnl Correspondence, 

 'edited' by Lord John Russell (8 vols. 1852-56); 

 Valtat, Thomas Moore,sa Kie<(Et>re*(Paris,18S6). 



Moorea. SeeEiMm. 



Moor-lien. See WATKU-IIEN. 



Moor Park. See FARXHAM. 



Moors, a vague ethnographical expression 

 applied to people whose geographical frontiers have 

 been constantly shifting. First given (Mauri) to 

 the inhabitants of the kingdom and subsequent 

 Roman province of Manretania, comprising within 

 variable limits the whole country west of N'umidia, 

 now called Algeria and Morocco, later on it in- 

 cluded the inhabitants of the whole of Africa north 

 of the Sahara and Atlas from Tripoli westwards. 

 Here for some three centuries flourished the great 

 African olinrrh of Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augus- 

 tine ; in 4'2!) the country was overrun by the Arian 



Vandals from Spain, but was recovered for the 

 Byzantine emperors by Belisarius ( 533-36 ) ; invaded 

 by the Arabs in 647, it ',vas speedily subdued, and 

 the Moors embraced Mohammedanism as quickly as 

 they had embraced Christianity, and have clung 

 to it ever since. From 1830 these countries have 

 been gradually occupied and colonised by the 

 French, with the exception of Tripoli and Morocco. 

 The Arab slave-dealers and mixed Arab and Negro 

 clans to the south are sometimes called the Moors 

 of the western Soudan. In early or prehistoric times 

 it is possible that the inhabitants north of the Atlas 

 and of southern Spain, the builders of the mega- 

 lithic monuments, may have been of the same race 

 in both continents. 



Whether in Algeria or in Morocco the Moors can- 

 not be considered as a pure race. Some authorities 

 take them as nearly equivalent to the Berbers, even 

 the nomad trilies ; others restrict the name to an 

 admixture of Arab blood, and call Moors only the 

 more settled Arabic-speaking population of the 

 towns. According to some the Arabic stock is 

 the Semitic element, the Berber or native is the 

 Hamitic element in the resultant Moor. Though 

 still numerous, the town Moore seem destined to 

 dwindle before the European colonists. The more 

 nomad Berber or Kabyle tribes will probably 

 maintain their ground. 



In European history the term is applied in a 

 general way to the inhabitants of the Barbary 

 states under Turkish rule, and to the actual in- 

 habitants of Morocco, hut in a special sense to the 

 Arab and Berl>er conquerors and occupants of Spain 

 from 711 to 1492. \Vithin twenty years from their 

 first landing these trilies had overrun the whole of 

 Spain except the Asturias, had got possession of 

 the Narlxjnnaise (719), had raided into France, till 

 finally repulsed by Charles Martel near Tours in 

 732. For a short time one calif ruled the whole of 

 Islam from beyond Bagdad to the Atlantic. When 

 in 750 the Abbaside califs overthrew the Ommiades 

 (Califs), a descendant of the latter, Alidurrahnian 

 I.,. escaped and founded the califate of the West at 

 Cordova in 755. His dynasty lasted till the degrada- 

 tion of Hashim III. in 1031. Then after a period of 

 anarchy the Almoravides (Berbers) succeeded from 

 IliMi to 1147; the Almohades followed from 1130 

 to 1232. The greater part of Spain had now been 

 lost, but the Beni-Nasr held Granada from 1232 to 

 1492. The chief steps of the Spanish re-conquest 

 are the taking of Toledo, 1085; Saragossa, 1118; 

 Valencia, by Jaime I. of Aragon, 1238 ; Seville, 

 1248 ; Murcia, 1260 ; Granada, 1492. The first of 

 these invaders of Spain were mainly of Arab blood, 

 and brought with them capacities of civilisation. 

 From the 8th to the close of the Dili centuries 

 the Spanish Moors in architecture, literature, 

 science, industry, manufacture, and agriculture 

 were far in advance of any northern European 

 race of that date ; no other people in western 

 Europe could have then built a cathedral like the 

 mosque of Cordova (784-793) ; in philosophy and in 

 the terms of mathematical and astronomical science 

 they have left their impress on njost of the lan- 

 guages of western Europe. Only in religion were 

 they inferior, and even here their toleration of the 

 Christians, though contemptuous, contrasts favour- 

 ably with that of the Christians towards the Moors 

 after the conquest. But after the 12th and 13th 

 centuries the conditions were reversed. The Moors 

 had no reserve of civilisation or of increasing 

 resources to fall back upon in northern Africa ; 

 they were degenerating, while behind Christian 

 Spain was a Europe ever growing more civilised 

 and richer in resources of every kind. The con- 

 quest was retarded by the division and intestine 

 struggles of the Christian kingdoms ; but these 

 same, causes told far more fatally on the Moors. 



