the Rev. W. Turner , Jun. , MA., Lives of the eminent Unitarians

In 1750, Dr. Lardner published a volume of Sermons, chiefly of a practical character. These sermons, it may be presumed, are a fair specimen of the usual style of his preaching, and probably afford us, at the same time, a tolerably exact criterion of the preacher's own mind and character. They are judicious and instructive; and the perusal of them cannot fail to be profitable to those who can be persuaded to bestow upon them the attention which they deserve. The style is correct and perspicuous, but altogether unadorned; the divisions are formal and inartificial, and the whole composition indicates as little as can be conceived of the rhetorician's art. The practical applications, though rational and sensible, scarcely ever rise to eloquence; displaying little of that unction which is perhaps indispensable in one who seeks to rouse the attention and interest the feelings of a popular audience. When we further consider the preacher's physical infirmity of extreme deafness, rendering it next to impossible that he should possess that power of modulating his voice which is almost essential to a public speaker, it is not perhaps to be much wondered at that his hearers were not numerous. Dr. Lardner himself, as he advanced in years, became more and more sensible of this; and he was in consequence induced, in 1751, to resign his office of morning preacher at Crutched Friars.

In 1753, Dr. Lardner printed, but without his