Literary Cleric

NZ Truth, Issue 1173, 24 May 1928, Page 6

Literary Cleric

MANY of the cloth, from Lewis Carroll and Hugh Benson downward, have distinguished themselves with the pen. , Not unworthy to be ranked m such a family is Dr. Rutherford Waddell, for more than forty years a notability m Dunedin — m the church and out of it.

That church is St. Andrew's (Presbyterian), of . which, during this period, Dr. Waddell has been not only the religious, but the literary , centre. . It is no exaggeration to say that some who have since done well m literary life owe much to the cultured originality with which Dr. Waddell treated English classics ■m his well-known literary circle some time ago, when he put a new meaning- into George

Eliot, Charlotte Bronte and that now old-fashioned controversial poem, "Hilda among the Broken Gods." It is also an open secret that certain weekly articles m a South Island newspaper have long been from his pen. Literrateur and clergyman, he has now retired, and with his. wife has been visiting Northern Ireland, his native country.