Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 2.djvu/71

 DELAN.Y. 67 five years in a state of matrimonial happiness. She was a great proficient in painting; one work of her laborious industry more curious than useful, was a Flora of coloured paper, consisting of nine hundred and eighty plants, exe cuted, according to Lord Orford, “with a precision and truth unparalleled.” The Doctor was not so absorbed in domestic enjoyment, as to neglect his studies. On March 13, 1745, he preached an excellent sermon before the Society for the promoting Protestant Working Schools in Ireland. This year he also published a volume of sermons upon social duties, fifteen in number; to which in a second edition in 1747, he added four more, on the opposite vices. Along with these he inserted a 30th of January sermon, preached in 1788, before the Lord-Lieutenant, William Duke of Devonshire. These sermons are entitled to great praise from their style of composition, and they are very valuable, as treating well subjects of important and universal concern. He was soon after this, in May the same year, advanced to the highest preferment he ever attained, the deanery of Down, in the room of Dr. Thomas Fletcher, promoted to the bishopric of Dromore. In 1748, he published a sixpenny tract, entitled, “An Essay towards evidencing the divine Original of Tythes,” and had been at first drawn up, and publicly preached as a sermon. The text selected was, the tenth command ment, which forbids coveting the goods of our neighbour; and the preacher has been censured for attempting to derive the doctrine from that prohibition. A more appro priate passage of scripture might no doubt have been chosen; but it frequently happens, that a text is sought out like the motto for a book, after the subject is either written or planned out; and it by no means follows, that the preacher is to found his arguments on that authority alone. After an interval of six years, he again appeared before the public in answer to the Earl of Orrery's remarks on the life and writings of Dr. Swift. The noble lord's repre sentations had given great pain to many of the Dean's