THE

LIFE OF E. MOORE,

BY MR. CHALMERS.

HAVING lately published what information I could collect respecting the life of Moore', the present article will be little else than a transcript, with a few additional particulars from more recent inquiry. For the account of his family I am indebted to Dr. Anderson, who received his information from Mr. Toulmin of Taunton.

Edward Moore was the grandson of the reverend John Moore, of Devonshire, one of the ejected nonconformists, who died Aug. 23, 1717, leaving two sons in the dissenting ministry. Of these, Thomas, the father of our poet, removed to Abingdon in Berkshire, where he died in 1721, and where Edward was born March 22, 1711-12, and for some time brought up under the care of his uncle. He was afterwards placed at the school of East Orchard in Dorsetshire, where he probably received no higher education than would qualify him for trade.

For some years he followed the business of a linen-draper, both in London and in Ireland, but with so little success that he became disgusted with his occupation, and, as he informs us in his preface, 66 more from necessity than inclination," began to encounter the vicissitudes of a literary life. His first attempts were of the poetical kind, which still preserve his name among the minor poets of his country. In 1744, he published his Fables for the Female Sex, which were so favourably received, as to introduce him into the society of some learned and some opulent contemporaries. The hon. Mr. Pelham was one of his early patrons, and, by his Trial of Selim, he gained the friendship of lord Lyttelton, who felt himself flattered by a compliment turned with much ingenuity, and decorated by wit and spirit.

But as, for some time, Moore derived no substantial advantage from patronage, his chief dependance was on the stage, to which, within five years, he supplied three pieces of considerable, although unequal, merit. The Foundling, a comedy, which was first acted in 1748, was decried from a fancied resemblance to the Conscious Lovers. It is however, of a more lively cast, and the characters and incidents are more natural and probable. His Gil Blas, which appeared in 1751, met with a more severe fate, and, 1 British Essayists, vol. xxvi. pref. to the World.

VOL XIV.

notwithstanding the sprightliness of the dialogue, not altogether unjustly. The reader will perhaps not be displeased to read the following account of its failure, written for the Gentleman's Magazine, by Dr. Johnson'.

"Perhaps the ill success of this comedy is chiefly the effect of the author's having so widely mistaken the character of Gil Blas, whom he has degraded from a man of sense, discernment, true humour, and great knowledge of mankind, who never discovered his vanity but in circumstances in which every man would have been vain, to an impertinent, silly, conceited coxcomb, a mere Lying Valei, with all the affectation of a fop, and all the insolence of a coward. But though he was not at liberty to degrade Gil Blas, some applause is certainly due to him for having changed the character of Isabella. In the novel she is a woman of virtue, and Aurora's stratagem to deprive her of the affection of Don Lewis, whoin she tenderly loved, is so base and cruel, that a good mind regrets her success, and a bad one is encouraged to imitation: but in the play she is a prostitute, that needed only to be known to be hated, and Aurora is no more than an instrument in the discovery of her true character."

The Gamester, a tragedy, first acted Feb. 7, 1753, was our author's most successful attempt, and is still a favourite. In this piece, however, he deviated from the custom of the modern stage, as Lillo had in his George Barnwell, by discarding blank verse, and perhaps nothing short of the power by which the catastrophe engages the feelings, could have reconciled the audience to this innovation. But his object was the misery of the life and death of a gamester, to which it would have been difficult to give a heroic colouring, and his language became, what would be most impressive, that of truth and nature. The critic already quoted remarks, that it "probably produced a greater effect upon the majority of the audience than if it had been decorated with beauties, which they cannot miss, at the expense of that plainness without which they cannot understand."

Davies, in his life of Garrick, seems inclined to share the reputation of The Gamester between Moore and Garrick. Moore acknowledges, in his preface, that he was indebted to that inimitable actor for " many popular passages," and Davies believes that the scene between Lewson and Stukely, in the fourth act, was almost entirely his, because he expressed, during the time of action, uncommon pleasure at the applause given to it. Whatever may be in this conjecture, the play, after having been acted to crowded houses for eleven nights, was suddenly withdrawn. The report of the day attributed this to the intervention of the leading members of some gaming clubs. Davies thinks this a mere report, "to give more consequence to those assemblies than they could really boast." From a letter, in my possession, written by Moore to Dr. Warton, it appears, that Garrick suffered so much from the fatigue of acting the principal character as to require some repose. Yet this will not account for the total neglect, for some years afterwards, of a play, not only popular, but obviously calculated to give the alaim to reclaimable gamesters, and perhaps bring the whole gang into discredit. The author mentions, in his letter to Dr. Warton, that he expected to clear about four hundred pounds by his tragedy, exclusive of the profits by the sale of the copy.

It is asserted by Dr. Johnson, in his life of lord Lyttelton, that, in return for Moore's elegant compliment, The Trial of Selim, his lordship paid him with "kind words, which, as is common, raised great hopes, that at last were disappointed." It is possible, how

2 From internal evidence.

ever, that these hopes were of another kind than it was in his lordship's power to gratify3, and it is certain that he substituted a method of serving Moore, which was not only successful for a considerable time, but must have been agreeable to the feelings of a delicate and independent mind. About the years 1751-2 periodical writing began to revive in its most pleasing form, but had hitherto been executed by men of learning only. Lord Lyttelton projected a paper, in concert with Dodsley, which should unite the talents of certain men of rank, and receive such a tone and consequence from that circumstance, as mere scholars can seldom hope to command or attain. Such was the origin of The World, for every paper of which Dodsley stipulated to pay Moore three guineas, whether the papers were written by him, or by the volunteer contributors. Lord Lyttelton, to render this bargain more productive to the editor, solicited and obtained the assistance of the earls of Chesterfield, Bath, and Corke, and of Messrs. Walpole, Cambridge, Jenyns, and other men of rank and taste, who gave their assistance, some with great regularity, and all so effectually, as to render The World far more popular than any of its contemporaries.

In this work, Moore wrote sixty-one papers, in a style easy and unaffected, and treated the whims and follies of the day with genuine humour. His 'thoughts are often original, and his ludicrous combinations argue a copious fancy. Some of his papers, indeed, are mere playful exercises, which have no direct object in view, but in general in his essays, as well as in all his works, he shows himself the friend of morality and public decency. In the last number, the conclusion of the work is made to depend on a fictitious accident which had occasioned the author's death. When the papers were collected into volumes for a second edition, Moore superintended the publication, and actually died while this last number was in the press: a circumstance which induces the wish that death may be less frequently included among the topics of wit.

During the publication of The World, and probably before, Moore wrote some lighter pieces and songs for the public gardens. What his other literary labours were, or whether he contributed regularly to any publications, is not known. A very few weeks before his death he projected a magazine, in which Gataker, and some other of his colleagues in The World, were to be engaged. His acknowledged works are not numerous, consisting only of the poems here reprinted, and of his three plays. These were published by him, in a handsome quarto volume, in 1756, by subscription, dedicated to the duke of Newcastle, brother to his deceased patron Mr. Pelham. The subscribers were very numerous, and included many persons of the highest rank and talents, but he did not long enjoy the advantages of their liberality. He died, February 28, 1757, at his house at Lambeth, of an inflammation on his lungs, the consequence of a fever improperly treated.

In the year 1750, he married Miss Hamilton, daughter of Mr. Charles Hamilton, table-decker to the princesses: a lady who had herself a poetical turn. During their courtship, she addressed some lines to a female friend, of which Mr. Moore's name, by

3 Of this Moore was not always sensible. On one occasion, when lord Lyttelton bestowed a small place on Bower, to which our poet thought he had a higher claim, he behaved in such a manner to his patron as to occasion a coolness. Horace Walpole undertook to reconcile them. Moore did not know that Walpole had written the Letters to the Whigs, which, in his zeal for Lyttelton, he had undertaken to answer. Horace, however, kept his own secret, and performed the office of mediator. Walpole's Letters, in Works, vol. v.

a small change to More, not uncommon in pronunciation, was the burthen. The last stanza runs thus:

You will wonder, my girl, who this dear one can be,
Whose merit can boast such a conquest o'er me:
His name you may guess, for I told it before,

It begins with an M, but I dare not say More.

The whole may be perused in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1749.

By this lady, who in 1758 obtained the place of necessary-woman to the queen's apartments, which she held until her death in 1804, he had a son Edward, who died in the naval service in 1773.

Moore's personal character appears to have been unexceptionable, and his pleasing manners and humble demeanour rendered his society acceptable to a very numerous class of friends. His productions were those of a genius somewhat above the common order, unassisted by learning. His professed exclusion of Greek and Latin mottos from the papers of The World (although they were not rejected when sent) induces me to think that he had little acquaintance with the classics, and there is indeed nothing in any of his works that indicates the study of a particular branch of science. When he projected the magazine above-mentioned, he told the Wartons, in confidence," that he wanted a dull plodding fellow of one of the universities, who understood Latin and Greek +."

Of his poetry, simplicity and smoothness appear to be the leading features: hence he is easily intelligible, and consequently instructive, and his Fables have always been popular. All his pieces are of the light kind, produced with little effort, and to answer temporary purposes. We find no where indications that he could have succeeded in the higher species of poetry. His songs have much originality of thought, but sometimes a looseness of expression which would not now be tolerated. His Nun might be excluded from the collection, without injury to his memory. The Trial of Selim is an ingenious and elegant panegyric, but it ought to have sufficed to have once verified the forms of law. The Trial of Sarah --, alias Slim Sal, has too much the air of a copy. He ranks but low as a writer of odes, yet The Discovery, addressed to Mr. Pelham, has many beauties, and among those the two last stanzas may be safely enumerated.

4 Wooll's Life of Warton, vol. i. p. 245.