ARMSTRONG MAGNEY.* Tars melodramatic little tale has but one merit.
In spite of the improbable tissue of incidents by which it is disfigured, and the author's admiring delineation of moods of wholly morbid sentiment, there is a sincere and not entirely unsuccessful effort to depict the state of doubt into which the very noblest and most spiritual minds sometimes temporarily fall, more from the intensity of their faith, and the trembling eagerness with which they yearn to see God vindicating His own righteousness in the government of the world, than from any dullness of intellect, conscience, or love. The clerical hero of this tale, the Rev. Armstrong Maguey, is a figure evidently suggested by the life of the Rev. F. W. Robertson. Armstrong Magney, also, is an eloquent preacher. He, too, is of the militant class of religious teachers. He, too, is athletic, artistic, full of the glow of a many-coloured imagination. He, again, like Mr. Robertson, throws up a career at Cheltenford (a disguise for Chel- tenham) because an interval of suspended belief, though not dis- belief, comes upon him. He, too, rushes into Switzerland to find in physical exercise and the beauty of nature an escape from his own mental pain, and sometimes expresses the delight that he
• arnistross Magary. By Heraeldus Grey. London : Richard Bentley.
finds in the grandeur of nature's wildest scenes almost in the same words. The only point in which the delineation of intellectual character differs,—of course we do not mean either that Mr. Robert- son's doubts ever went as far, nor that the ridiculous plot of this book, except so far as it sketches the peculiar sensibility of this elo- quent and glowing temperament to special doubts of its own, has any kind of connection with Mr. Robertson's history,—is that, if we understand this author aright, his hero takes refuge from his difficulties, in a sort of pantheism which makes all evil a mere appearance, and good the inner reality of all things. This is as entirely at variance with Mr. Robertson's views as it is with true philosophy. Without true freedom of will, neither good nor evil could be realities, and with it we must concede a certain limited sphere in the universe to human evil no less than to divine and human good. Apart from this one fundamental modification of his intellectual conceptions, it is clear that Mr. Robertson sat for the portrait of the Rev. Armstrong Maguey, and that the por- trait is in many respects a vigorous one,—spoiled, however, by being embodied in a decidedly poor, inartistic, and melodramatic tale, containing at least one obvious blunder of fact, the assump- tion that the warrant of the medical officers of an Italian lunatic asylum could be acted upon as valid in England, without any certificates from English physicians that the patient was mad and needed restraint.
Heraclitus Grey is, we conclude, a pseudonym. But who- ever the author may be, we very much doubt his (or her) powers for this species of fiction. The slight attempts at dramatic humour in the picture of Mrs. Jennings, the stone- mason's wife, seem to us forced and ineffective. There is no ease at all in the narrative. There is no character but the hero's, which has evidently been a careful study. Armstrong Magney himself, who is a copy, and not a fresh creation, is the only figure of the slightest merit in the group. The young Italian lady with whom he falls in love, Miss Lorisse Cellini, is a lay figure of the, most romantic unreality. And too much of the sentiment is in the following style ;—(Mr. Armstrong Maguey has just had a struggle with himself whether he shall offer to this young lady or not, believing that she loves him, and knowing that he loves her, and has decided that he will not, on the absurd and utterly rotten ground that the young lady ought to marry a cousin whom she loathes, because that will give her the highest opportunity of sacrificing herself for the recovery of a degraded soul which is in greater need of her purifying influence) :—
" The full orb of that terrible moment was at length rounded and fell on the past as a tear on an open grave. The hands, clenched in agony, slowly relaxed, and when Armstrong raised his oyes, there was almost a smile in them."
That is sickly sentiment translated into the Gaily Bellouvraph style of metaphorical magniloquence.
But the picture of a noble and most religious mind overshooting, as it were, the divine government itself, in its eagerness to see the arm of righteousness stretched out to save the weak and suffering and to strike the strong and insolent, and recoiling upon historical and metaphysical doubt because God is not quick enough in answering these yearnings, is often very vividly given. This train of thought, for instance, following the discovery by Armstrong Maguey of a great crime and sin, in which the perpetrator had gone undiscovered and unpunished, and all the misery had fallen • on his victim, is a train of thought which must have often and powerfully moved the minds of thinking men and earnest theo- logians in the present generation :—
" But deeper thoughts agitated him. Was there any divine purpose for the accomplishment of which it could be justifiable to allow the per- petration of such wrongs ? He hoped so, and said to himself, how high that purpose must be, seeing that it is not too dearly bought even by such sacrifices! How bright must be the light that casts such deep shadows ! He was most anxious still to believe that the purpose over all the world was good, and not evil or coldly indifferent. Bat then there were such hideous doubts. He feared he could not much longer hold to his faith against such overwhelming evidence. In bitter un- belief his heart cried, 'Let God show what this purpose is for which millions of men are tormented on the earth these thousands of years ! Oh let God at least give some sort of assurance that He has such a suf- ficient reason, if He cannot, or will not, let us see what the purpose is ! Let us at least be favoured with some pledge that we are not tantalized in sports or in spite. If the Gospel history of the incarnation and sacri- fice and resurrection of a Saviour-God is intended to afford this hope, why not make its historic proof a little surer? And we want a living Christ, not .one who has left the world eighteen hundred years. 0 Christ, come! or come again! or come ! Perhaps Satan hinders. Perhaps the old seers were right who said there was an eternal prin- ciple of Evil as well as of Good. Then let the Good manifest Himself to us, that we may fight with Him against evil! Let the Christ come, so that we need not rationally be compelled to doubt ; and, at least, let God be good, if He is not almighty. But if He prefer might to right, then '— Armstrong paused before Harvey's painting= then let me be tor- mented with Prometheus, rather than reign with Jove." There is a passage in Mr. Robertson's life (Vol. I., p. 111) cor- responding very closely to this train of thought, in which he describes the moment when all faith seems to tremble and pass away into uncertainty, and "the sky above this universe seems a dead expanse, black with the void from which God himself has disappeared,"—and maintains that faith can be recovered only by holding fast to "the grand simple landmarks of morality. In the darkest hour through which a human soul can pass, whatever else is doubtful, this at least is certain. If there be no God, and no future state, yet even then it is better to be generous than selfish, better to be chaste than licentious, better to be true than false, better to be brave than a coward." Mr. Robertson maintained that he who clang to this, would find his theological doubts dis- appear, and his faith in God and Christ return. Whether this is our author's.Heraclitus Grey's—view, we do not know. He breaks off his story suddenly with a mere gleam of hope visiting his hero's mind that his faith might return to him, on the rather insufficient ground that he is going to be married to Miss Lorisse Cellini.
The restlessness with which our unsettled clerical hero throws himself into the enjoyment of the wildest Alpine tempests, finding a sort of image, in the storm, of the agitation of his own heart, is also almost copied from Mr. Robertson's life. We are told of the Rev. Armstrong Magney :—
"It was enough in this time of spiritual darkness, and after failure of all his life's hopes, that he could lose all sight of man /II these grand solitudes, and find the balm of Nature, if, indeed, she had any healing or alleviation for his wounds. At least she had mysterious and mighty sympathies with him. He felt this as she lifted around her jagged peaks, and bared to his eyes the traces of great scars, and deep wounds, and terrific convulsions. Especially he felt this sympathy as, with wild exultation of spirit, he toiled up against the drift of a snow-storm, or the wild battering of hail. His heart would leap within him as he gazed, solitary among the awful mountains, in the midst of wild storms, with the huge black clouds suddenly rolling down the white ice-peaks, and all the peaks resounding with the clanging reverberations of the imminent thunder. Here nature found a voice grand enough to say out all the raging discord of his soul, and shriek it in the ears of God. It was terrible—blinding--deafening; but it was rapture."
This is almost identical with two or three passages descriptive of Mr. Robertson's Swim journey during the time of his deepest religious suspense,—this, for instance:— " I wish I could describe one scene which is passing before my memory at this moment when I found myself alone in a solitary valley in the Alps, without a guide, and a thunderstorm coming on ; I wish I could explain how every circumstance combined to produce the same feeling, and ministered to unity of expression ; the slow wild wreathing of the vapour round the peaks, concealing their summits, and impart- ing in semblance their own motion, till each dark mountain form seemed to be mysterious and alive; the eagle-like plunge of the lam- mergeier, tho bearded vulture of the Alps • the rising of the flock of °houghs, which I had surprised at their feast on carrion, with their red beaks and legs, and their wild shrill cries startling the solitude and silence, till the blue lightning streamed at last, and the shattering thunders crashed as if the mountains must give way. And then came the feelings which in their fullness man can feel but once in life ; mingled sensations of awe and triumph, and defiance of danger, perils, rapture, contempt of pain, humbleness, and intense repose, as if all this strife and struggle of the elements were only uttering the unrest of man's bosom ; so that in all such scenes there is a feeling of relief, and he is tempted to cry out exultingly, There, there ! All this was in my heart, and it was never said out till now."
The one passage is Obviously a transcript of the conception left upon the author's mind by the reading of the other.
The defect of the book, considered not as a work of art, but as a picture, often very vigorous, of a spiritual struggle in a mind of rather high calibre, is that it gives us no idea at all how the struggle ends. All the first stages of the conflict are given, and then the story ends like a common love story. As a picture of doubt in a noble mind the story is able, but a fragment entirely unfinished,—with scarcely even an indication of the end. As a novel it is very bad and very feeble, but finished. It is a book which can scarcely be recommended to any one, because what is good in it is spoiled not only by what is bad, but by its own utter incompleteness ; and what is bad is very bad. Still, among the number of novels which are wholly destitute of high thoughts at all, a short one which has some high thoughts in it, in spite of the gaudy and melodramatic framework, cannot be declared absolutely unworthy, of reading.
Previous page
