Born at Abingdon, England, March 22, 1712: died at South Lambeth, London, March 1, 1757. An English dramatist and fabulist, third son of Thomas Moore, a dissenting clergyman. He failed in business as a linen-draper in London, and began as a writer with his “Fables for the Female Sex” in 1744. “The Foundling,” a comedy, was produced at Drury Lane on Feb. 13, 1748; “Gil Blas,” a comedy, in 1751; and “The Gamester,” in which Garrick appeared (and which he partly wrote), at Drury Lane on Feb. 7, 1753. In 1753 he was made editor of “The World,” a popular paper, which had Lord Lyttelton, Lord Bath, Lord Chesterfield, Soame Jenyns, Horace Walpole, and Edward Lovibond as contributors. His only son, Edward, was educated and pensioned by Lord Chesterfield.

Personal

  Let us not then aggravate those natural inconveniences by neglect; we have had sufficient instances of this kind already. Sale and Moore will suffice for one age at least. But they are dead, and their sorrows are over.

General

  Mr. Moore was a poet that never had justice done him while living; there are few of the moderns have a more correct taste, or a more pleasing manner of expressing their thoughts. It was upon these Fables he chiefly founded his reputation, yet they are by no means his best production.

  His style is easy and unaffected, and always appropriate to his subjects, which have great variety. If he had not more knowledge of the world than some of his predecessors, he could at least employ it very agreeably. He had professed that the paper had contained novelty of ridicule, and it must be allowed that he seldom betrays the servile copyist, when treating of those subjects which had been handled by others…. Moore excelled principally in assuming the serious manner for the purposes of ridicule, or of raising idle curiosity…. However trite his subject, he enlivens it by original turns of thought. Some of the papers are mere exercises of humour, which have no direct moral in view, and for this he in one place offers an apology, or at least acknowledges that he aimed at no higher purpose than entertainment. In the last paper, the conclusion of the work is made to depend on a fictitious accident which is supposed to have happened to the author, and occasioned his death. When the papers were collected in volumes, Mr. Moore superintended the publication, and actually died while this last paper was in the press.

  Of the papers of Moore, which form more than a fourth of the whole work, [“World,”] the characteristic is a grave and well-sustained irony, that not unfrequently displays a considerable share of original humour. The style which he has adopted, if not very correct or elegant, is, however, easy and perspicuous, and not ill suited to the general nature of his subjects.

  The “Fables” of Moore rank next to those of Gay, but are inferior to them both in choice of subject and in poetical merit.

  His “Fables for the Female Sex” have an excellent moral turn, but are somewhat deficient in the sprightliness which is especially demanded in that species of composition…. His domestic tragedy, “The Gamester,”… though it set tradition at nought by being written in prose, was on the whole a success. The prologue and some of the most admired passages, including the greater part of the scene between Lewson and Stukely in the fourth act, were written by Garrick, who played the principal part. The piece ran with applause for eleven nights, and has since kept the stage.

  The most noticeable except the “Rambler” and the “Adventurer” (a sort of imitation “Rambler,” edited by Hawkesworth, the great ape of Johnson, and contributed to by Johnson himself) was the “World,” which appeared between 1753 and 1756. This is noteworthy, because an attempt was made to make it a distinct “journal of society.” The editor, Edward Moore, was a man of letters of some ability, who played the main part of “Adam Fitz Adam”—the eidolon who, according to the etiquette of the scheme, was supposed to produce the paper—very fairly. Its interest for us consists in the fact that among the contributors were some of the very chief of those men of fashion, Chesterfield, Horace Walpole, Soame Jenyns, Hanbury Williams, who at the time affected literature.