Author: Moore, Henry
Biography:
MOORE, Henry (1732-1802: ODNB)
He was born on 30 Mar. 1732 at Plymouth, the son of Rev. Henry Moore, Minister of Treville Street (Presbyterian), and his wife Sarah Bellew, who had married at Exeter Cathedral in 1724. He was educated by Rev. John Bedford and by his father before proceeding to Philip Doddridge’s dissenting Academy at Northampton (1749-51) and Caleb Ashworth’s Daventry Academy (1752-55) where Joseph Priestley was a fellow student. He was elected minister at Dulverton, Somerset in 1755; Modbury, Devonshire, in 1757; and finally Liskeard, Cornwall, in about 1787, where he remained until his death but may have retired in 1792. He seems to have led an obscure and retired life although he was admired by other scholars. His A Word to Mr Madan (1781) was considered one of the more elegant of several refutations of Rev. Martin Madan’s defence of polygamy in Thelyphthora (1780). Andrew Kippis thought highly of him and Joseph Priestley enlisted his help with and contributions to Commentaries and Essays (1785-99), where his exegeses of Old Testament passages in the second volume were well received. John Aikin (q.v.) also admired him and undertook the task of editing his poems from manuscript and gathering subscribers after Moore had suffered a severe stroke of palsy and was incapacitated. The poems are elegant but were slightly old-fashioned by the time of publication, with the notable exception of the political “Ode, occasioned by the Atheistical Tenets Publicly Avowed in France.” He died, unmarried, on 2 Nov. 1802. According to Alexander Gordon (DNB), that manuscript or possibly a further collection of poems was in the possession of Rev. W. J. Odgers of Bath in 1878. (ODNB 20 Jan. 2023; DNB; John Aikin, “Preface by the Editor,” Poems, Lyrical and Miscellaneous [1806], v-xii; Jerom Murch, A History of the Presbyterian and General Baptist Churches in the West of England [1835], 511-15; Bibliotheca Cornubiensis [1874], 1: 368; Dissenting Academies Online [QMC]; GM Feb. 1803, 192; Monthly Repository Nov. 1815, 686-88, Mar. 1822, 163-4; Julian, 1196) AA