which went through three editions, _The Foundling_ (1748), a successful comedy, and _Gil Blas_ (1751), an unsuccessful comedy. In 1753, with encouragement and some assistance from Garrick, he produced _The Gamester_, upon which his reputation as a writer depends. It is impossible, of course, to review here all the factors involved in the development of middle-class tragedy in England in the eighteenth century. However, certain aspects of that movement which concern Moore's immediate predecessors and which have not been adequately recognized might be mentioned briefly. Aside from Elizabethan and Jacobean attempts to give tragic expression to everyday human experience, historians have noted the efforts of Otway, Southerne, and Rowe to lower the social level of tragedy; but in this period middle-class problems and sentiments and domestic situations appear in numerous tragedies, long-since forgotten, which in form, setting, and social level present no startling deviations from traditional standards. Little or no attention has been given to some of these obscure dramatists who in the midst of the Collier controversy attempted to illustrate in tragedy the arguments advanced in the third part of John Dennis's _The Usefulness of the Stage, to the Happiness of Mankind, to Government, and to Religion_ (1698). Striving to demonstrate the usefulness of the stage, these avowed reformers produced essentially domestic tragedies, by treating such problems as filial obedience and marital fidelity in terms of orthodox theology. The argument that the stage can be an adjunct of the pulpit is widespread, and appears most explicitly in Hill's preface to his _Fatal Extravagance_ (1721), sometimes regarded as the first middle-class tragedy in the eighteenth century, and in Lillo's dedication to _George Barnwell_ (1731). The line from these obscure dramatists at the turn of the century to Lillo is direct and clear. Of these forgotten plays we can note here only _Fatal Friendship_ (1698) by Mrs. Catherine Trotter whom John Hughes hailed as "the first of stage-reformers" (_To the Author of Fatal Friendship, a Tragedy_), an unquestionably domestic tragedy inculcating a theological "lesson". To this play, which was acted with "great applause" (_Biographica Dramatica_, 107), Aaron Hill was, I am convinced, considerably indebted for his _Fatal Extravagance_, which is, in turn, one of the sources of _The Gamester_.