Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/391

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Moore
385
Moore

pendent to a very unusual degree. His history abounds with disinterested actions, and refusals of flattering offers which he feared might compromise his dignity or the dignity of letters. He has been unjustly blamed for neglecting his wife for London society. There can be no doubt that his principal motive for settling in the country was to exempt his wife from the mortification of vicinity to a society which would not have received her. This involved a great sacrifice on his part; to have renounced society himself would have been destructive of her interests as well as his. In truth, there seems little to censure or regret in Moore, except his disproportionate estimate of his own importance in comparison with some of his great ontemporaries, in which, however, he merely concurred with the general opinion of the time.

A portrait of Moore (aged 40), engraved by Holl after Thomas Phillips, is prefixed to vol. i. of the 'Memoirs,' and another portrait of him (aged 58), after Maclise, to vol. viii. of the same work. The author of 'Lalla Rookh' also forms one of the sketches in the 'Maclise Portrait Gallery' (ed. Bates, pp. 22-30), and there are other portraits by Shee and Sir Thomas Lawrence.

[The principal authority for Moore's life is his Memoirs, Journals, and Correspondence in eight volumes, published in 1853–6 by Earl Russell, and consisting of an unfinished autobiography, extending to 1799, journals from 1818 to 1847, and about four hundred letters filling up the gap. The correspondence might easily have been made more copious, and the diary would have gained by abridgment. The want of an accompanying narrative is much felt. Earl Russell, it is to be presumed, was too much engrossed with public affairs to supply this, or to perform any of the duties of an editor as he should have done. The work is nevertheless the indispensable foundation of all short biographies, among which that by H. R. Montgomery and the excellent memoir prefixed by Mr. Charles Kent to his edition of the poems deserve special notice. The best criticisms on Moore will be found in Hazlitt's Spirit of the Age, allowing for the political hostility with which this is coloured; Professor Minto's article in the Encyclopædia Britannica, and an able paper in vol. iii. of the National Review. See also Moore's autobiographic notices in the prefaces to his poems in the collected edition of 1840–2. Contemporary literary biographies abound with references to him, especially his own Life of Byron.]

R. G.


MOORE, THOMAS (1821–1887), gardener and botanist, was born at Stoke, near Guildford, Surrey, on 21 May 1821. He was brought up as a gardener, and was employed at Fraser's Lee Bridge Nursery, and subsequently, under Robert Marnock [q. v.], in the laying out of the Regent's Park gardens. In 1848, by the influence of Dr. John Lindley [q. v.], he was appointed curator of the Apothecaries' Company's Garden at Chelsea, in succession to Robert Fortune [q. v.], an appointment which gave him leisure for other work. He acted as an editor of the ‘Gardeners' Magazine of Botany’ from 1850 to 1851, of the ‘Garden Companion and Florists' Guide’ in 1852, of the ‘Floral Magazine’ in 1860 and 1861, of the ‘Gardeners' Chronicle’ from 1866 to 1882, of the ‘Florist and Pomologist’ from 1868 to 1874, and of the ‘Orchid Album’ from 1881 to 1887. He made a special study of ferns, most of his independent works being devoted to that group of plants; but he also acquired a knowledge of garden plants and florists' flowers generally, which was probably greater than that of any of his contemporaries. He acted as one of the secretaries of the International Flower-show in 1866, and was for many years secretary to the floral committee and floral director of the Royal Horticultural Society. Moore was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1851, and was also a member of the Pelargonium, Carnation, Auricula, and Dahlia Societies. He was constantly called upon to act as judge at horticultural shows, and only a short time before his death was engaged in classifying the Narcissi for the Daffodil Congress. After three or four years of infirm health he died at the Chelsea Botanical Garden on 1 Jan. 1887, and was buried in Brompton cemetery. His collection of ferns was purchased for the Kew herbarium. A somewhat roughly engraved portrait appears with an obituary notice in the ‘Gardeners' Chronicle’ for 1887 (i. 48).

Besides papers on ferns in various botanical journals (Royal Society Cat. of Papers, iv. 458, viii. 432), Moore's chief publications were: 1. ‘Handbook of British Ferns,’ 16mo, 1848. 2. ‘Popular History of British Ferns,’ 8vo, 1851, 2nd edit. 1855, abridged as ‘British Ferns and their Allies,’ 8vo, 1859, and also issued, with coloured illustrations by W. S. Coleman in 1861. 3. ‘Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland,’ edited by J. Lindley, and nature-printed by H. Bradbury, fol., 1855, and in 2 vols. 8vo, 1859. 4. ‘Index Filicum,’ 8vo, twenty parts, ending at the letter G, 1857–63. 5. ‘Illustrations of Orchidaceous Plants,’ 8vo, 1857. 6. ‘The Field Botanist's Companion,’ 8vo, 1862, of which a new edition appeared in 1867 as ‘British Wild Flowers.’ 7. ‘The Elements of Botany for Families and Schools,’ 10th edit. 1865, 11th edit. 1875. 8. ‘The Treasury of Botany,’ with John Lindley, 2 vols. 8vo, 1866, 2nd edit. 1874. 9. ‘The