"MARK RUTHERFORD."

THAT "Mark Rutherford," in spite of his manifest dis- tinction as a writer, should never have attained a vogue in the circulating library—that his work, if not his name, should be largely unknown to many who profess a taste for literature —is not altogether surprising ; for though no charge of

obscurity can be brought against him, his full significance demands for its apprehension a quality in the reader which only experience of life can bring. The books of "Mark Rutherford" could not possibly have been written by a young man, and they cannot be fully appreciated by a young man. There are some truths, some states of feeling, that can only be understood by those who hold the key of experience—who see with "the eye that bath kept watch on man's mortality "; and it was for such that "Mark Rutherford" wrote. He said that Wordsworth, in whose poetry he was steeped, had "recreated for him his Supreme Divinity "; and there is a passage in "The Excursion" which describes with peculiar felicity the mood and quality of "Mark Rutherford's" work. The poet speaks of one who has reached that period in life

"When youth's presumptuousness is mellowed down,

And manhood's vain anxiety dismissed; When wisdom shows her seasonable fruit, Upon the boughs of sheltering leisure hung In sober plenty."

That might have been written of the author of "The Autobiography," "The Deliverance," "The Revolution in Tanner's Lane," "Catherine Furze," and "Miriam's School- ing." With all their rare qualities, the most lasting impression left by those books on the attentive reader is of the mellowness, the maturity of the wisdom which they reveal It is impossible to tarn from them without a quickened apprehension for the significance of what seemed common- place, a larger charity for human weaknesses, and a livelier sympathy for life's disappointments and failures. If "Mark Rutherford" has renounced illusion, and has learnt to expect little from mankind, he teaches one how to make much of the little.

There is no other writer quite like him. Other writers have been psychological ; other writers have taken for their sub- je-cts quite humble, unheroic persons, living in drab and almost sombre surroundings ; other writers have found their interest in the trivial events of the daily round, the common task. But what other writer has in the same degree combined all these characteristics, and in a way that makes the reader sensible of a fine emotional and intellectual experience P Only great gifts and a richly furnished mind could have made so interesting, so satisfying, those slow-moving, uneventful narratives of inconspicuous lives lived in the forbidding atmosphere of provincial dissent. Some writers, with "Mark Ruthdrford's" intimate knowledge of one particular phase of English social conditions, would have been content to specialize in it—to subordinate everything to vivid genre pictures. But the striking quality of "Mark Rutherford" is that though his background is palpable, though its influence on his own mind is strong, it never gets in the way—it never weakens the humanity of his work. In the particular we recognize the universal, just as we do in all true literature. Perhaps the writer nearest in temper to "Mark Rutherford" was George Gissing, who had the same sensibility and sympathy for "creatures who can love and are yet so shut round with a wall of darkness." But Giesing's mental attitude towards what he observed and drew was not touched, as was "Mark Rutherford's," with a deep and natural piety—a piety entirely separated from dogma or formula, but still

instinctive and all-pervading. "Mark Rutherford's " task was not to justify the ways of God to man; but to reconcile the ways of man to God. The experiences through which his characters passed were important, not for themselves, but as salient events in the revelation and development of a human soul. "What we believe," he has written, "is not of so much importance as the path by which we travel to it." And yet, though the light-minded, the flippant, might find "Mark Rutherford" "preachy," no reflective mind, however secular in temper, could find him other than refreshing, if only because of his profound knowledge of the human heart, and of the rare flashes of a wisdom, never cynical, by which he interpreted it. Satire he eschewed, for if there was one quality more repugnant to his nature than another it was malice. His supreme guide to conduct was that of a very different teacher, Nietzsche, who said that the best reprisal for an injury was to convert the injury into a benefit.

It is the worth as well as the pathos of insignificance and apparent failure on which "Mark Rutherford" insists. Take, for example, the following passages from "The Autobio- graphy," "The Deliverance," and "The Revolution in Tanner's Lane"

" If we wish to be happy and have to live with average men and women, as most of us have to live, we must learn to take an interest in the topics that concern average men and women. • . . As a rule, men and women are always attempting what is too big for them."

"The tragedy of Promethean torture or Christ-like crucifixion may indeed be tremendous, but there is a tragedy, too, in the existence of a soul conscious of its feebleness and ever striving to overpass it."

"Blessed are they who heal us of self-despisings. Of all services which can be done to man, I know of none more precious."

"Nevertheless, suffering, actual personal suffering, is the mother of innumerable beneficial experiences, and unless we are so weak that we yield and break, it extracts from us genuine answers to many questions which, without it, we either do not put to ourselves, or if they are asked, are turned aside with traditional replies."

"We may reconcile ourselves to poverty and suffering, but few of us can endure the conviction that there is nothing in us, and that consequently we cannot expect anybody to gravitate towards us with any forceful impulse."

If a man wants to know what the potency of love is he must be a menial, he must be despised. He will then comprehend the divine efficacy of the affection of that woman to whom he is dear. Not love to the hero, but love to the Helot. . . . In the love of a woman to the man who is of no account, God has provided us with a true testimony of what is in His own heart."

It is this tenderness, this compassion never degenerating into sentiment, that at once endears and exalts for the reader " Mark Rutherford's " stories in spite of their forbidding milieu. And when we reflect that a mind so rich, so engentled and urbane, was nurtured in that milieu, it leaves a doubt as to whether, after all, grapes may not be gathered from thorns and figs from thistles. He saw how unlovely the greater part

of life was—how gratuitously it was made unlovely—and yet he was never either savage or sour. He might have said with George Meredith, "The gods may take from us everything except the fortitude to bear." It is not a little ironical that one whose bent was so deeply religious, and who was so well qualified to carry a message of consolation and inspira- tion,,should have been driven from the pulpit as a vocation on the count of heterodoxy. His essays on "The Book of Job" and the character of Saul show how finely he interpreted the Scriptures—what new beauty and significance he found in them. He was a profound student of Spinoza, a devout one of Wordsworth, and an illuminating critic of all great poetry. But what was especially precious and individual in him was that his culture, far from removing him in sympathy from the multitude, generated a philosophy for guidance in the trivial affairs of life, a philosophy rich in wisdom for unexceptional persons facing the problems of unexceptional circumstances.

"If anything annoying is said to me," he writes, "I always ask myself what it means—not to me, but to the speaker." "The longer I live the more fully lam convinced that argument on almost any subject is folly. . . . The generation of opinions is an operation of Nature of which, perhaps in a less degree than any other, is it possible to discover the law." • "A notion, self-begotten in me, of the limitations of my friend, is answerable for the barrenness of my intercourse with him. I set him down as hard; I speak to him as if he were hard and from that which is hard in myself. Naturally I evoke only that which is hard, although there may be fountains of tenderness in Lim of which I am altogether unaware."

"Habit is the saviour of most of us, the opiate which dulls the otherwise unbearable miseries of life."

"The perplexities of most persons arise from not understanding exactly what they want to do." "One-fourth of life is intelligible, and the other three-fourths is unintelligible darkness; and our earliest duty is to cultivate the habit of not looking round the corner."

One quality, perhaps, was not conspicuous in "Mark Rutherford "—the quality of humour. The cast of his mind was too grave. But there was a quiet irony which showed

itself in such a passage as this :—

"Considering the kind and quantity of trust which is placed in Providence, the most ambitious person would surely not aspire to its high office, and it may be pardoned for having laid down the inflexible rule to ignore without exception the confidence reposed in it."

It must be admitted that in all "Mark Rutherford's " stories there is no character that stands out memorable,

clearly defined, individual. It is the total and not the particular impression that is left, just as in his style there is no characteristic on which one can seize except a perfect simplicity and naturalness. But it is not as a storyteller that "Mark Rutherford" makes good his claims to enduring recognition. He is more than a novelist; he is a moralist— an interpreter who helps those face to face with the per- plexities, the trials, and the injuries of life, to understand, to endure, and to forgive. And thanks to the human heart by which we live, it is not likely that such services as those will become obsolete or negligible yet awhile.