Irwine, The Reverend Adolphus

"Rector of Broxton, Vicar of Hayslope, and Vicar of Blythe, a pluralist at whom the severest Church-reformer would have found it difficult to look sour." "His was one of those largehearted, sweet-blooded natures that never know a narrow or a grudging thought ; epicurean, if you will, with no enthusiasm, no self-scourging sense of duty; but yet, as you have seen, of a sufficiently subtle moral fibre to have an unwearying tenderness for obscure and monotonous suffering ... He really had no very lofty aims, no theological enthusiasm . . . He had that charity which has sometimes been lacking to very illustrious virtue—he was tender to other men's failings, and unwilling to impute evil. He was one of those men, and they are not the commonest, of whom we can know the best only by following them away from the market-place, the platform, and the pulpit, entering with them into their own homes, hearing the voice with which they speak to the young and aged about their own hearth-stone, and witnessing their thoughtful care for the every day wants of every-day comcompanions, who take all their kindness as a matter of course, and not as a subject for panegyric." " 'Mrs. Poyser used to say . . . Mr. Irwine was like a good meal o' victual, you were the better for him without thinking on it, and Mr. Ryde was like a dose o' physic, he gripped you and worreted you, and after all he left you much the same.' "He is very fond of Arthur Donnithorne, who has been his pupil, and he is a friend of Adam Bede also. He cautions Arthur not to turn Hetty Sorrel's pretty head, but from a too great delicacy of feeling does not encourage the confession which Arthur later tries to make to him. When Hetty Sorrel is arrested for child-murder, he is notified and has to break the news to Adam Bede and the Poysers. During the time of Hetty's trial he stands by Adam Bede, trying to help him in any possible way, and he is one of the witnesses in Hetty's behalf.

<em>Adam Bede</em>

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