CHAPTER III

THE IRONIC

The science of Esthetics is a tribute to our zeal in attempting to define the indefinable word beauty. Nearly as elusive of categoric bondage is _irony_; but for its capture no formal scientific crusade has as yet been organized. It is, however, whether in spite of its vagueness or because of it, a term of great and increasing popularity. No phrase is at present more of a general favorite than “The Irony of Fate,” no exclamation more frequent than “How ironic!” In this expressive and impressive utterance there is as much individual variation of meaning as in “How beautiful!” And it coexists with as much possibility of a standardized conception. What the latter may be, it is the business of the student of the subject to try to determine.

The etymology and early usage of the word are familiar enough. Generically, to the ancient Greeks, irony meant dissimulation in speech; specifically, that form of dissimulation used by Socrates for the confusion of his dialectic opponent, consisting on the part of the wise man of an assumption of ignorance which longed for enlightenment. On this bated hook were caught the unwary who pretended to wisdom the while they had it not, lured by flattering inquiry to a fatal communicativeness.

In its present status the term has two fairly distinct divisions, characterized by Bishop Thirwall, in his essay on the Irony of Sophocles, as the _verbal_ and the _practical_. The former is the rhetorical device whereby a certain idea or circumstance is implied by its statement in terms to the contrary or to the opposite effect. The latter is the contrast between the real and apparent state of things, or between the expected and the eventual, commonly described as the Irony of Fate. A third form, the kind known as dramatic irony, might be mentioned, though it is really a subdivision of cosmic irony.[165] For the actor makes his blunders and gets into his predicaments through ignorance; and this discrepancy between his notion of things and their actuality adds zest to the enjoyment of the spectator, who is in the secret. So the great unseen Spectator is conceived to observe the stage of the world, and derive the amusement of superior knowledge from that

“Which, for the Pastime of Eternity, He doth himself contrive, enact, behold.”

Among these varieties, and between all of them and the original meaning, there must be enough common ground to account for the persistence of the terminology through the centuries, allowing for the divergence natural to a slow and half conscious evolution. This common ground of denotation is of course dissimulation, whether in the restricted field of knowledge, or the complete reversal of statement and intention, or the specious show of things whereby we are deluded into an erroneous supposition or a false sense of security. But this simple matter of deception is enveloped in an atmosphere of connotation that is charged with complication and subtlety.

The ironic habit of speech is a sign of a mind imaginative and averse to the obvious. Its indulgence indicates a love of concealment, from æsthetic motives, and a corresponding abhorrence of flat, naïve exposure. The ironist has taken the veil of covertness to protect himself from the garish overt day.[166] Its reception, on the other hand, is an equally sure indicator of disposition. For it is beloved of its own kin, deep answering unto deep, and distrusted by the alien with a repulsion as strong as that of the subtle for the simple. To understand or not to understand the ironic is an acid test of the literal mind. An apposite reference to this fact is found in a comment on one of our novelists.[167]

“Some simple-minded people are revolted, even in literature, by the ironical method; and tell the humourist, with an air of moral disapproval, that they never know whether he is in jest or in earnest. To such matter-of-fact persons Mr. Disraeli’s novels must be a standing offense, for it is his most characteristic peculiarity that the passage from one phase to the other is imperceptible.”

Another reason for the prejudice against ironic language may be that it is popularly supposed to emanate from a caustic soul, with leanings toward cynicism; an error due to a narrow identification of irony with its extreme right wing,--sarcasm, which is indeed, as its etymology would signify, a flesh-tearing, or at least heart-rending, performance, belonging, as Bishop Hall would say, to the toothed division of satire.

But on the extreme left sits banter, entirely amiable and even affectionate. “You scamp, you rascal, you young villain!” is a favorite way of expressing parental pride and tenderness. Reticent youth apostrophizes his cherished friend as an “old fraud.” “Philosophic irony,” says Anatole France, “is indulgent and gentle.”[168] And Symonds[169] describes Ariosto as watching “the doings of humanity with a genial half smile, an all pervasive irony that had no sting in it.” Ranging thus from the playful to the ferocious, irony is at its best when not too near either margin, having in itself more point than banter and more polish than sarcasm. “They are all,” says another critic,[170] “with others of the family, in the regular service of Satire.”

The metaphor of service may be allowed, in that satire, being the largest and most general type, includes the others. The relationship may be stated more literally by saying that irony is the form of humorous criticism which is expressed through innuendo, partly because of preference for verbal inversion, and partly in recognition of the topsy-turvydom of life. All irony is therefore satirical, though not all satire is ironical. The ironist conveys his own point of view by stating another’s, condemning by appearing to approve, or _vice versa_. Boisterousness and didacticism are foreign to irony and not to be feared so long as it is dominant. Perfection in its employment indicates that complete self-control which is supposed to be a patrician trait.

This does not mean, however, that ironic usage or attitude has been confined to the upper social stratum as its special prerogative. Nietzsche may indeed exclaim, “We should look upon the needs of the masses with ironic compassion: they want something which we have got--Ah!” But these compassionated masses have themselves been capable of the retort ironic, and have had also their spokesmen, from Lucian to Galsworthy. In _The Cock_, Lucian gives an ironic enumeration of the dangers and troubles of the rich and powerful, and displays the advantage of being poor and obscure. In _The Ferry_, Mycellus, the cobbler, voices an ironic lament on leaving life, and parodies the regrets of the wealthy:[171]

“Oh, dear, dear! My shoe-soles! Oh! My old boots! Oh! What will become of my rotten sandals? Alas, poor wretch that I am, I shall no longer go without food from early morning until evening, nor in winter time walk barefoot and half naked, my teeth chattering from the cold. Ah, me! Who, forsooth, is going to have my shoemaker’s knife and my awl?”

As manner of speech is but a reflection of manner of thought, it is evident that the ironist is not sufficiently accounted for as a devotee of a certain verbal device. This, on the contrary, is only an external manifestation of something more subjective and permanent,--a mood or an attitude which may enlarge into a definite interpretation of life. Of this interpretation the keynote is that Fate is ironical. In its unmitigated form this philosophy declares that there is a deviltry that misshapes our ends, construct them how we will. It is more often found, however, in a modified creed which admits that the presence of this perverse element in existence does not prove that all life is of the same piece; that the mad pranks are those of destiny’s underlings, dressed in a little brief authority, and not perpetrated by the ruler of the universe.

Such speculations lead into the realm of religion, and religion has had to provide a place in its pantheon for this spirit of disastrous caprice. There it lurks under various guises. Baal may fall asleep or go on a journey at a time most inauspicious for his followers. The behavior of the Olympians quite justifies the debate between Timocles and Damis, reported by Lucian, as to the theocratic mismanagement of the world. Setebos slays and saves with an eye single to the bewilderment of the human puppets. The presiding goddess in The House of Fame rewards and punishes with a similar unaccountability. “The gods,” says Smollett[172] “not yet tired with sporting with the farce of human government, were still resolved to show by what inconsiderable springs a mighty empire may be moved.” Sport is a need also of the President of the Immortals, and where so agreeably found as in undermining the patient structure of poor little Tess, and bringing it to the ground with a splendid crash?

The essence of an ironic circumstance lies in its apparently wanton thwarting by a narrow margin of a normal sequence in itself logical and desirable, or in an imposition of calamity on the same exasperating terms. Either it frustrates not merely what might have been but what almost was, or it brings to pass the disaster that was almost averted. It might come under the simpler caption of bad luck, except that not all bad luck is ironic; only a particular brand of it. Irony is the obverse side of that happy concatenation of events which we approvingly designate as Providential. The favoring and therefore the rational and commendable happening is an act of special providence. The contrary comes from the malicious mischief of the Aristophanes of Heaven.

In literature the ironic temper has acquitted itself with distinguished success. Among its contributions one recalls _The Dinner of Trimalchio_, _The Golden Ass_ (and the medieval Burnellus), _Letters of Obscure Men_, _Praise of Folly_, _Gargantua_, _Don Quixote_, _The Gull’s Hornbook_, _Knight of the Burning Pestle_, _A Modest Proposal_, _The Shortest Way with Dissenters_, _Candide_, _Jonathan Wild_, _Murder as a Fine Art_, _Castle Rackrent_, _Northanger Abbey_, _The Fair Haven_. A glance at the list shows the versatile nature of irony both as to form and idea, though its history taken as a whole has shown more predilection for the romantic than for the realistic method. It is an ingredient in all burlesque and caricature, and is on the other hand least necessary to an explicit presentation of reality, however full this last may be of implicit irony. Its consistent practice is to deceive, and this can more easily be accomplished through fantasy and symbolism. When, however, it is accomplished by more demure and disarming means, the deception is more thorough just because of taking the reader unaware. One is on guard against any form of the symbolic, knowing that some suspicious thing is therein concealed. But who would think of questioning a collection of letters, an essay or a treatise? Yet these are the culprits guilty of ruthlessly hoodwinking the trusting literal mind.

Ulrich von Hutten’s _Epistolæ_ were edited by Maittaire, and the edition reviewed by Steele (whom we should not expect to be caught napping), both taking them seriously. Defoe’s pilloried renown is well known. Butler’s work “in Defense of the Miraculous Element in Our Lord’s Ministry upon Earth,” was solemnly greeted by the reviewers as a champion of orthodoxy, and sent by Canon Ainger to a friend he wished to convert. Swift and De Quincey have been condemned for abuse of children and encouragement of crime.

Misunderstanding of this sort is a triumph for irony, a test of success. But there are also signs of a misapprehension of the ironic disposition, especially as related to the satiric. Of this conception two modern critics afford examples. In the Introduction to his _Defoe_, Masefield remarks,--

“An ironical writer has always nobility of soul; a satirist has seldom any quality save greater baseness than his subject. An ironical writer knows the good; a satirist need only know the evil.”

The superb eulogy of the first statement may be dismissed as a bit of rhetoric, but the doom pronounced in its corollary, is based on a double confusion; first between the ironist and the humorist, and second between the satirist and the misanthrope. In a recent discussion the same fallacy is promulgated at greater length:[173]

“The satirist is the aggressive lawyer, fastening upon

## particular people and particular qualities. But irony is no more

personal than the sun that sends his flaming darts into the world. The satirist is a purely practical man, with a business instinct, bent on the main chance and the definite object. He is often brutal, and always overbearing; the ironist, never. Irony may wound from the very fineness and delicacy of the attack, but the wounding is incidental. The sole purpose of the satirist and the burlesquer is to wound; and they test their success by the deepness of the wound. But irony tests its own by the amount of generous light and air it has set flowing through an idea or a personality, and the broad significance it has revealed in neglected things.”

The only pertinent reply to such eloquence is one that may seem impertinent, namely, to refer the special pleader to a useful principle in argument greatly favored by a certain canny Greek dialectician, and quaintly restated in the eighteenth century:[174]

“If once it was expected by the Public that Authors should strictly _define_ their Subjects, it would instantly cheque an Innundation of Scribbling. The _desultory_ Manner of Writing would be absolutely exploded; and Accuracy and Precision would be necessarily introduced upon every Subject. * * * If Definitions had been constantly expected from Authors there would not have appeared one hundredth Part of the present Books, and yet every Subject had been better ascertained.”

Irony, it is true, is defined by the essayist as “the science of comparative experience,” but this attempt to fit a philosophic giant to the bed of his smaller ironic brother meets with the usual Procrustian result. As for the tribute to irony, a far more impressive one is paid in the almost casual utterance of Lamb, who makes it the climax of his enumeration of the blessings vouchsafed to mortality,--“and _irony itself_--do these things go out with life?”

In Victorian fiction the presence of this element is found very much as it is in life, unobstrusive but easily detectable. What Saintsbury says of Jane Austen would apply in varying degrees to her successors:[175]

“Precisely to what extent the attractive quality of this art is enhanced by the pervading irony of the treatment would be a very difficult problem to work out. It is scarcely hazardous to say that irony is the very salt of the novel; and that just as you put salt even in a cake, so it is not wise to neglect it wholly even in a romance. Life itself, as soon as it gets beyond mere vegetation, is notoriously full of irony; and no imitation of it which dispenses with the seasoning can be worth much.”

This vital importance of what might be called negative value is suggested by the juvenile’s definition of salt as “what makes your potato taste bad if there isn’t any on it.” It is just this fact, however, that allows the ironic to defy analysis. By itself one spoonful of salt is very much like another. The whole secret is in the combination. Its presence or absence gives one the immediate feeling of the little more and how much it is, the little less and how far away. But to segregate it for scrutiny is to destroy the charm of the savor.

Since such segregation must nevertheless be attempted for the sake of the information it may yield, it seems advisable to keep to the division already noted, and distinguish between verbal and philosophical irony as they exist in the novel. These correspond in a general way to the direct and the dramatic methods used in the larger field of satire.

Of ironic language we find practically none in Reade, very little in Kingsley, Mrs. Gaskell, and Charlotte Brontë, more frequent flashes in Lytton and Disraeli, increasing still more in Dickens and Trollope. In Peacock, Thackeray, Eliot, Meredith, and Butler, it is more pervasive, even when less in quantity, and representative of a consistent attitude.

As Mrs. Kirkpatrick-Gibson is Mrs. Gaskell’s favorite game, she constantly exposes her to ironic self-betrayal, and finally allows her disciplined husband the luxury of an ironic retort,--not in the lady’s presence, of course, but by way of reply to his daughter Molly’s anticipation of an orgy of freedom in her absence.[176]

“The doctor’s eyes twinkled, but the rest of his face was perfectly grave. ‘I’m not going to be corrupted. With toil and labour I’ve reached a very fair height of refinement. I won’t be pulled down again.’”

Kingsley and Brontë are both incapable of this quiet banter, and can produce from their earnest souls only an awkward and angry sarcasm.

The Misses Sympson and the Misses Nunnely are asking whether Shirley’s expressive manner of singing can be proper.[177]

“Was it proper? * * * Decidedly not: it was strange, it was unusual. What was _strange_ must be _wrong_; what was _unusual_ must be _improper_. Shirley was judged.”

Alton Locke says of his own aspiration,[178]

“No doubt it was very self-willed and ambitious of me to do that which rich men’s sons are flogged for not doing, and rewarded with all manner of prizes, scholarships, fellowships, for doing.”

But in the midst of his bitterness he stops to remark,

“I really do not mean to be flippant or sneering. I have seen the evil of it as much as any man, in myself and in my own class.”

The description in _Yeast_ of the fight between the squire’s retainers and the London poachers, which results in the death of faithful old Harry Verney, concludes with this comment,--characteristic in that it breathes the spirit of irony but lacks its complete form.[179]

“And all the while the broad still moon stared down on them grim and cold, as if with a saturnine sneer at the whole humbug; and the silly birds about whom all this butchery went on, slept quietly over their heads, every one with his head under his wing. Oh! if the pheasants had but understanding, how they would split their sides with chuckling and crowing at the follies which civilized Christian men perpetrate for their precious sake!”

That Lytton should gain in poise and subtlety in the forty-five years intervening between _Pelham_ and _Kenelm Chillingly_ is to be expected, although the progression is by no means a steady one. Some of his most absurd sarcastic moralizing is found in _My Novel_, about midway in time,--particularly on the March of Enlightenment, with a smart sketch of half a dozen typical Marchers; and on liberal notions generally. And in the youthful volume are some very good touches, as this concerning his country uncle:[180]

“He was, as people justly observed, rather an odd man: built schools for peasants, forgave poachers, and diminished his farmers’ rents; indeed, on account of these and similar eccentricities, he was thought a fool by some, and a madman by others.”

This pales perceptibly, however, by the side of Peacock’s firm and vivid treatment of the same subject, embodied in Squire Crochet:[181]

“He could not become, like a true-born English squire, part and parcel of the barley-giving earth; he could not find in game-bagging, poacher-shooting, trespasser-pounding, footpath-stopping, common-enclosing, rack-renting, and all the other liberal pursuits and pastimes which make a country gentleman an ornament to the world, and a blessing to the poor; he could not find in these valuable and amiable occupations, and in a corresponding range of ideas, nearly commensurate with that of the great king Nebuchadnezzer, when he was turned out to grass; he could not find in this great variety of useful action, and vast field of comprehensive thought, modes of filling up his time that accorded with his Caledonian instinct.”

This in turn is quite equaled by Kenelm’s coming-of-age speech, though his indictment of the genus squire is couched in unironical satire. Not that the youth was unacquainted with the uses of irony. At the age of nine he had had occasion to send a letter to a schoolmate, conveying his conviction of that lad’s lack of intelligence. He had heard his father remark that a certain neighbor was an ass, and that he was going to write and tell him so. He made inquiries into the matter of phrasing such information. He received the following reply,--by which he profited most effectively in his own correspondence:[182]

“But you can not learn too early this fact, that irony is to the high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman is an ass, he does not say it point-blank--he implies it in the politest terms he can invent.”

This principle is applied on a national scale in the discourse of the intruder among the Vrilya, whose situation resembles that of Gulliver eulogizing to the king of the Brobdingnagians the Institutions of England, except that Lytton does not blunt his irony by relapsing into plain terms, as Swift does in the “pernicious race of little odious vermin.” The visitor waxes eloquent about America:[183]

“Naturally desiring to represent in the most favorable colors the world from which I came, I touched but slightly, though indulgently, on the antiquated and decaying institutions of Europe, in order to expatiate on the present grandeur and prospective pre-eminence of that glorious American Republic, in which Europe enviously sees its model and tremblingly foresees its doom. Selecting for an example of the social life of the United States that city in which progress advances at the fastest rate, I indulged in an animated description of the moral habits of New York. Mortified to see, by the faces of my listeners, that I did not make the favorable impression I had anticipated, I elevated my theme; dwelling on the excellence of democratic institutions, their promotion of tranquil happiness by the government of party, and the mode in which they diffused such happiness throughout the community by preferring, for the exercise of power and the acquisition of honors, the lowest citizens in point of property, education, and character.”

This is the ironic version of Matthew Arnold’s polished dubiety about majorities in _Numbers_; and of the robustious satire of Dickens. If we feel that Lytton excels the latter in pithy conciseness and allusive point, we have to remember that he was at this time more than twice the age of Dickens when _Martin Chuzzlewit_ was written, and that in the intervening quarter century some improving changes had taken place in their common object of satire.

Disraeli’s irony is less tangible and quotable. His favorite method is to hint at the implication in a burlesque comparison; as in the opening sentence of _The Young Duke_:[184]

“George Augustus Frederick, Duke of Saint James, completed his twenty-first year, an event which created almost as great a sensation among the aristocracy of England as the Norman Conquest.”

Later his toilette is described in terms of a campaign, concluding,[185]

“He assumes the look, the air that befit the occasion: cordial, but dignified; sublime, but sweet. He descends like a deity from Olympus to a banquet of illustrious mortals.”

_Tancred_ is introduced by an epic of the _chefs_. Prevost is discoursing to Leander (who will take no engagements but with crowned heads), of their profession and of Adrien, a neophyte:[186]

“‘It is something to have served under Napoleon,’ added Prevost, with the grand air of the Imperial kitchen. ‘Had it not been for Waterloo, I should have had the cross. But the Bourbons and the cooks of the Empire never could understand each other. * * *

“‘He is too young. I took him to Hellingsley, and he lost his head on the third day. I entrusted the souffles to him, and, but for the most desperate personal exertions all would have been lost. It was an affair of the bridge of Areola. * * * Ah! _mon Dieu!_ those are moments!’”

Later the same functionary is scandalized at the diners’ neglect of his colleague (shown in the failure to present him with tokens of esteem) when he had surpassed himself in a superb dinner:[187]

“How can he compose when he is not appreciated? Had he been appreciated he would today not only have repeated the _escalopes a la Bellamont_, but perhaps even invented what might have outdone it. * * * These things in themselves are nothing; but they prove to a man of genius that he is understood. Had Leander been in the Imperial kitchen, or even with the emperor of Russia, he would have been decorated!”

It transpires, however, that the artist’s wounded feelings were soothed by a belated acknowledgment, accompanied by a tactful hint that he suffered in a good cause, and that as an esthetic missionary he should be lenient to the social delinquencies of the barbarians he ministered unto:[188]

“Was it nothing, by this development of taste, to assist in supporting that aristocratic influence which he wished to cherish, and which can alone encourage art?”

It is not to be supposed that this indicates the range of Disraeli’s ideas, merely the subject on which he chiefly expends his ironic persiflage. A representative example of his more serious sarcasm is found in the second volume of his Young England Trilogy, the one most alive with social sympathy:[189]

“Infanticide is practised as extensively and as legally in England as it is on the banks of the Ganges; a circumstance which apparently has not yet engaged the attention of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.”

In Dickens and Trollope irony is a substantial though not exactly an integral element; more substantial in the former than the latter. We find ironic comment both direct, by the writer, and indirect, through ironic characters; and the still more indirect, in the betraying speech that relates facts true in a different sense from that meant by the speaker, thus conveying a reverse effect from the one intended.

A text for the first kind is furnished by Noah Claypole, the sordid bully and snob, prompt to retaliate on one still lower in the scale of circumstance than himself:[190]

“This affords charming food for contemplation. It shows us what a charming thing human nature may be made to be; and how impartially the same amiable qualities are developed in the finest lord and the dirtiest charity-boy.”

Another is the Chuzzlewit Family, introduced by a long prologue of ironic symbolism. Specifically there is the eulogy of the head of the present branch of it:[191]

“Some people likened him to a direction post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there: but these were his enemies; the shadows cast by his brightness; that was all.”

Later in his illustrious career, he is upheld in his holy horror at the mercenary diplomacy of a landlady. Mr. Pecksniff rebukes,--

“Oh, Baal, Baal! Oh my friend, Mrs. Todgers! To barter away that precious jewel, self-esteem, and cringe to any mortal creature--for eighteen shillings a week!”

And Dickens echoes,[192]

“Eighteen shillings a week! Just, most just, they censure, upright Pecksniff! Had it been for the sake of a ribbon, star, or garter; sleeves of lawn, a great man’s smile, a seat in parliament, a tap upon the shoulder from a courtly sword; a place, a party, or a thriving lie, or eighteen thousand pounds, or even eighteen hundred,--but to worship the golden calf for eighteen shillings a week! Oh pitiful, pitiful!”

Two more characteristic instances may be cited. The first is concerning the failure of the firm of Dombey and Son.[193]

“The world was very busy now, forsooth, and had a deal to say. It was an innocently credulous and a much ill-used world. It was a world in which there was no other sort of bankruptcy whatever. There were no conspicuous people in it, trading far and wide on rotten banks of religion, patriotism, virtue, honor. There was no amount worth mentioning of mere paper in circulation, on which anybody lived pretty handsomely, promising to pay great sums of goodness with no effects. There were no shortcomings anywhere, in anything but money. The world was very angry indeed; and the people especially who, in a worse world, might have been supposed to be bankrupt traders themselves in shows and pretenses, were observed to be mightily indignant.”

The second is anent the Whelp, Tom Gradgrind.[194]

“It was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been brought up under the continuous system of unnatural restraint, should be a hypocrite; but it was certainly the case with Tom. It was very strange that a young gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance for five consecutive minutes, should be incapable at last of governing himself; but so it was with Tom. It was altogether unaccountable that a young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle, should be still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling sensualities; but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom.”

In character we have a range from the vulgar, vigorous sarcasm of Mr. Panks[195] to the languid patrician banter of Sir John Chester, exercised on the uncomprehending Sim Tappertit and Gabriel Varden. There are also ironic touches in the two heroes, Martin Chuzzlewit and David Copperfield.

The most delightful pictures of those who entertain irony unaware are Mr. Bumble, Mr. Squeers, Mr. Turveydrop, Mrs. Skewton, Mrs. Nickleby, and Mrs. Pardiggle.

Entrenched in wisdom, these philosophers all enunciate profound truths about life.

The beadle discovers the illimitable vistas of human desires, together with the unreasonable expectation of having them gratified. He laments the ingratitude of the pauper who, in antiparochial weather, having been granted bread and cheese, has the audacity to ask for a bit of fuel.[196]

“That’s the way with these people, ma’am; give ’em a apron full of coals today, and they’ll come back for another, the day after tomorrow, as brazen as alabaster.”

The pedagogue learns that parental prejudice sometimes extends to an extravagant pampering of offspring, even carried so far as an absurd opposition to wholesome discipline. Summoned to London on some bothering law business for what was called the neglect of a boy, he explains to the sympathetic Ralph Nickleby that the lad had as good grazing as there was to be had.[197]

“When a boy gets weak and ill and don’t relish his meals, we give him a change of diet--turn him out, for an hour or so every day, into a neighbor’s turnip-field, or sometimes, if it’s a delicate case, a turnip-field and a piece of carrots alternately, and let him eat as many as he likes. There an’t better land in the county than this perwerse lad grazed on, and yet he goes and catches cold and indigestion and what not, and then his friends brings a lawsuit against _me_!”

The Professor of Deportment, not subject to these sordid contacts, inhales a more rarified atmosphere, and recognizes the value of a _succes d’estime_, sufficient to compensate for neglect on the part of a stupid public.[198]

“It may not be for me to say that I have been called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop; or that His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, did me the honour to inquire, on my removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that fine building), ‘Who is he? Who the devil is he? Why don’t I know him? Why hasn’t he thirty thousand a year?’ But these are little matters of anecdote--the general property, ma’am,--still repeated, occasionally, among the upper classes.”

The contributions of the ladies seem to be along psychological rather than social or sociological lines. Mrs. Nickleby is plaintively aware of the thistle-ball nature of the masculine mind, fixed by no friendly star, though the star was not wanting. She discerns on the part of her son a certain inattentiveness to her remarks.[199]

“But that was always the way with your poor dear papa,--just his way--always wandering, never able to fix his thoughts on any one subject for two minutes together. I think I see him now! * * * looking at me while I was talking to him about his affairs, just as if his ideas were in a state of perfect conglomeration! Anybody who had come in upon us suddenly would have supposed I was confusing and distracting him instead of making things plainer; upon my word they would.”

Mrs. Skewton and Mrs. Pardiggle have solved the secret of a happy life, but by different ways. The former perceives it to spring from scholarship vivified by enthusiasm for the fascinating perspectives of history.[200]

“Those darling bygone times, Mr. Carker, * * * with their delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and everything that makes life truly charming! How dreadfully we have degenerated. * * * We have no faith in the dear old barons, who were the most delightful creatures--or in the dear old priests, who were the most warlike of men--or even in the days of that inestimable Queen Bess, which were so extremely golden! Dear creature! She was all heart! And that charming father of hers! I hope you dote on Henry the Eighth!”

The latter, on the other hand, lives in the present, is attuned to the _carpe diem_ idea, and realizes the joy of self-expression and the exhilaration of labor.[201]

“I freely admit, I am a woman of business. I love hard work; I enjoy hard work. The excitement does me good. I am so accustomed and inured to hard work, that I don’t know what fatigue is. * * * This gives me a great advantage when I am making my rounds. If I find a person unwilling to hear what I have to say, I tell that person directly, ‘I am incapable of fatigue, my good friend, I am never tired, and I mean to go on till I have done.’ It answers admirably!”

In contrast to the various methods of Dickens, Trollope practically confines himself to direct comment. His favorite topics are politics and society. As to the former, radical iconoclasm is described in the person of Mr. Turnbull.[202]

“Having nothing to construct, he could always deal with generalities. Being free from responsibility, he was not called upon either to study details or to master even great facts. * * * Mr. Monk had once told Phineas Finn how great were the charms of that inaccuracy which was permitted to the Opposition.”

The always useful ironic device of simply delineating one’s objects with brushes and colors of their own, of presenting them as they see themselves, is used in one episode both on an institution and an individual. The Press reacts to the appointment of a scoundrel to the Cabinet.[203]

“The _Jupiter_, with withering scorn, had asked whether vice of every kind was to be considered, in these days of Queen Victoria, as a passport to the cabinet. Adverse members of both Houses had arrayed themselves in a pure panoply of morality, and thundered forth their sarcasms with the indignant virtue and keen discontent of political Juvenals.”

Nevertheless, the new incumbent enjoys his emoluments.[204]

“Now, as he stood smiling on the hearthrug of his official fireplace, it was quite pleasant to see the kind, patronizing smile which lighted up his features. He delighted to stand there, with his hands in his trousers pocket, the great man of the place, conscious of his lordship, and feeling himself every inch a minister.”

With reference to what was then a new policy of administration, he employs ironic exhortation.[205]

“Let every place in which a man can hold up his head be the reward of some antagonistic struggle, of some grand competitive examination. Let us get rid of the fault of past ages. With us, let the race be ever to the swift, and victory always to the strong. And let us always be racing, so that the swift and strong shall ever be known among us. But what, then, for those who are not swift, not strong? _Væ victis_! Let them go to the wall. They can hew wood, probably; or, at any rate, draw water.”

The thing in society which Trollope apparently finds most open to ironic treatment is the commercializing of marriage. In one place this takes the form of sage advice.[206]

“There is no doubt but that the privilege of matrimony offers opportunities to money loving young men which ought not to be lightly abused. Too many young men marry without giving any consideration to the matter whatever. * * * A man can be young but once, and, except in cases of a special interposition of Providence, can marry but once. The chance, once thrown away, may be said to be irrecoverable. * * * Half that trouble, half that care, a tithe of that circumspection would, in early youth, have probably secured to them the enduring comforts of a wife’s wealth. * * * There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony; that is, of course, provided that the aspirant declines the slow course of honest work.”

However, in default of golden attractions, a wife may have other assets. Griselda Grantly had neither houses nor land, neither title nor position. But Lord Dumbello had all these, and needed only a lay figure for lovely clothes to grace his establishment; the more icily regular and splendidly null, the better.[207]

“But a handsome woman at the head of your table, who knows how to dress and how to sit, and how to get in and out of her carriage--who will not disgrace her lord by her ignorance, or fret him by her coquetry, or disparage him by her talent--how beautiful a thing it is! For my own part I think that Griselda Grantly was born to be the wife of a great English peer.”

It is comforting to know that in the midst of these lofty circles the daughter of the archdeacon did not lose the virtue of humility; for we read in a subsequent narrative:[208]

“But, now and again, since her august marriage, she had laid her coronated head upon one of the old rectory pillows for a night or two, and on such occasions all the Plumsteadians had been loud in praise of her condescension.”

The difference between the novelists just discussed and the remaining half of the list, in the use of irony, is more easily perceived than defined. It can only be suggested by metaphor. Confectionery may be flavored, for instance with citron in lumps or liquid peppermint. It is evident that the former is more visible and detachable, but that the latter affects more pervasively the quality of the product. In the concoctions already mentioned, from Lytton to Trollope, it is easy enough to stick in one’s thumb and pull out a plum. All the plums being pulled out, the character of the remaining portion would not be radically changed. But peppermint cannot be extracted except by a process of chemical dissolution; and if it could, the taste of the whole would be altered. Yet it is not patent to eye or finger, though not wanting in stimulus to other senses. These two ingredients, however, are not mutually exclusive. The permeated may also be sufficiently glomerate to permit of some dissection; only the operation is less fully explanatory of the whole.

For example, we may extract from Peacock his description of the Abbey of Rubygill, situated--[209]

“* * * in a spot which seemed adapted by nature to be the retreat of monastic mortification, being on the banks of a fine trout-stream, and in the midst of woodland coverts, abounding with excellent game.”

Or of the sword of Matilda, which went--[210]

“* * * nigh to fathom even that extraordinary depth of brain which always by divine grace furnishes the interior of a head-royal.”

Or the reply of Mr. Cypress to Dr. Folliott’s statement of the Brotherhood of Man:[211]

“Yes, sir, as the hangman is of the thief; the squire of the poacher; the judge of the libeller; the lawyer of his client; the statesman of his colleague; the bubble-blower of the bubble-buyer; the slave-driver of the negro: as these are brethren, so am I and the worthies in question.”

But this would give little idea of Peacock’s prevailing attitude,--a cheerfully sardonic amusement at the state of human affairs, expressed most frequently by means of an ironic juxtaposition of Past and Present.

Less cheerful and more sardonic is the smile with which Butler greets life and its follies. He is classed with Peacock as a romanticist in method, but is more akin to Swift in temper and manner than to any Victorian. The reader’s mind must be kept taut in the constant process of translating the assumed pose into the real meaning. Under the grave disapproval of the Erewhonian treatment of disease or any misfortune, and crime, each being discussed in the terms we apply to the other, lurks the reversed judgment. Nothing short of complete presentation, especially of the chapters on Current Opinions, Some Erewhonian Trials, The Musical Banks, and The Colleges of Unreason, could convey an adequate impression.

A representative sample, however, is found in the retort of the judge who pronounces sentence on the youth “charged with having been swindled out of a large property during his minority by his guardian.” The defendant puts up the plea natural under the circumstances, and is promptly instructed not to talk nonsense:[212]

“People have no right to be young, inexperienced, greatly in awe of their guardians, and without independent professional advice. If by such indiscretions they outrage the moral sense of their friends, they must expect to suffer accordingly.”

Later a thorough exposition of this legal philosophy is given in a long judicial oration preceding the doom of a prisoner found guilty of pulmonary consumption. A few excerpts show the trend of the argument.[213]

“It is all very well for you to say that you came of unhealthy parents, and had a severe accident in your childhood which permanently undermined your constitution; excuses such as these are the ordinary refuge of the criminal; but they cannot for one moment be listened to by the ear of justice. * * * There is no question of how you came to be wicked, but only this--namely, are you wicked or not? * * * It is intolerable that an example of such terrible enormity should be allowed to go at large unpunished. Your presence in the society of respectable people would lead the less able-bodied to think more lightly of all forms of illness; * * * A time of universal dephysicalization would ensue; medicine vendors of all kinds would abound in our streets and advertise in all our newspapers. * * * If you tell me that you had no hand in your parentage and education, * * * I answer that whether your being in a consumption is your fault or no, it is a fault in you, and it is my duty to see that against such faults as this the commonwealth shall be protected. You may say that it is your misfortune to be criminal; I answer that it is your crime to be unfortunate.”

This is a fit successor to the marvelous “Let no man” conclusion to the _Modest Proposal_.

Another unomittable instance is the account of a religious reformation. The visitor hints to a Musical Bank manager that the popular reliance on that currency was rather perfunctory, and that the other financial system, ostensibly flouted, was the real repository of coin and confidence.[214]

“He said that it had been more or less true till lately, but that now they had put fresh stained glass windows into all the banks in the country, and repaired the buildings, and enlarged the organs; the presidents, moreover, had taken to riding in omnibuses and talking nicely to people in the streets, and to remembering the ages of their children, and giving them things when they were naughty, so that all would henceforth go smoothly.

“‘But haven’t you done anything to the money itself?’ said I, timidly.

“‘It is not necessary,’ he rejoined; ‘not in the least necessary, I assure you.’”

One citation also from Butler’s novel is irresistible, particularly as it reminds one of Trollope’s practical admonition to young men contemplating matrimony. This is on the subject of domestic discipline.[215]

“To parents who wish to lead a quiet life I would say: Tell your children that they are very naughty--much naughtier than most children. Point to the young people of some acquaintances as models of perfection and impress your own children with a deep sense of their own inferiority. You carry so many more guns than they do that they cannot fight you. This is called moral influence, and it will enable you to bounce them as much as you please. * * * Say that you have their highest interests at stake whenever you are out of temper and wish to make yourself unpleasant by way of balm to your soul. Harp much upon these highest interests.”

Thackeray is placed in the group of dyed-in-the-wool ironists mainly because he does not belong in the other. One somehow acquires the impression that ironic sayings will be plentiful as blackberries; but when one actually goes berrying, he finds the crop strangely vanished. Lacking the grave, dry, imperturbable manner and the consistently preserved attitude, he cannot avoid the temptation of relapsing into the literal and giving self-conscious explanations, as in _Barry Lyndon_, and _Catherine_. This produces something of the effect of Lydgate’s ironic titles,--_So as the Crabbe goeth forward_, and _As Straight as a Ram’s Horn_,--followed by perfectly serious moralizing. Probably nothing would astonish or distress Thackeray more than to have his humor rated as the humor of Lytton, Reade, or Kingsley; nor would this indeed be quite fair to him. Yet his lack of real spontaneity classifies him with them rather than with Dickens or Trollope, and his lack of finish and subtlety prevents him from being ranked with Peacock, Eliot, Meredith or Butler. His ironic phrasing has too often the flat, shallow sound of the man determined to be clever. Such, for instance, is the comment on the plutocratic Miss Crawley:[216]

“She had a balance at the banker’s which would have made her beloved anywhere. * * * What a dignity it gives an old lady, that balance at the banker’s!”

Such also is this demolishing assault upon worldliness:[217]

“I, for my part, have known a five pound note to interpose and knock up a half century’s attachment between two brethren; and can’t but admire, as I think what a fine and durable thing Love is among worldly people.”

And this upon a shoddy _noblesse oblige_:[218]

“I admire that admiration which the genteel world sometimes extends to the commonalty. There is no more agreeable object in life than to see May Fair folks condescending.”

When he gravely admonishes, it is as follows:[219]

“Praise everybody, I say to such; never be squeamish, but speak out your compliment both point blank to a man’s face, and behind his back, when you know there is a reasonable chance of his hearing it again.”

The direct satire on Pitt Crawley as an undergraduate is given an ironic fillip by another sting in the tail:[220]

“But though he had a fine flux of words, and delivered his little voice with great pomposity and pleasure to himself, and never advanced any sentiment or opinion which was not perfectly trite and stale, and supported by a Latin quotation; yet he failed somehow, in spite of a mediocrity which ought to have insured any man a success.”

Another successful bit,--this time the device of catching an unwary character in an ironic trap,--is the account of Penn’s linguistic proficiency. His friend Strong compliments him on speaking French like Chateaubriand,--[221]

“‘I’ve been accustomed to it from my youth upwards,’ said Pen; and Strong had the grace not to laugh for five minutes, when he exploded into fits of hilarity which Pen has never, perhaps, understood up to this day.”

In her preface to the second edition of _Jane Eyre_, Charlotte Brontë said that Thackeray resembled Fielding “as an eagle does a vulture;” and also compared the former to a Hebrew prophet. Putting aside the injustice to Fielding (happily atoned for by the author of _Middlemarch_, thereby restoring the average in feminine criticism) one is moved to reply that if any Victorian shoulders received the mantle of Elijah they were undoubtedly the firm-muscled ones of George Eliot. Hers is the union of native, smoldering wit and tremendous moral earnestness that marked the ancient Semitic race and reappeared in the modern Saxon. The downright seriousness which constitutes her main mood is tinctured but lightly with the ironic tone, but its pungency is well distributed. Its appearance is characterized by brevity and frequency. There are no long passages of sustained irony; and no very long ones wholly devoid of it. It usually occurs in quiet, unostentatious phrases, as in the description of the Raveloe philosophy, or of that superior family whose daughters bloomed into the Mesdames Deane, Glegg, Pullet, and Tulliver.

The cogitative Mr. Glegg, for instance, had a truly scientific attitude toward the captious temper that enlivened his home,--[222]

“* * * it is certain that an acquiescent mild wife would have left his meditations comparatively jejune and barren of mystery.”

Mrs. Waule, on the other hand, was an acquiescent mild soul, and accepted domestic frankness as in the order of nature,--[223]

“Indeed, she herself was accustomed to think that entire freedom from the necessity of behaving agreeably was included in the Almighty’s intentions about families.”

From this banter we pass to a bitter sarcasm that covers a burning social sympathy in the account of the Florentine banquet, where none could eat the tough, expensive peacock, but all gloried in the extravagance of having it to play with,--[224]

“And it would have been rashness to speak slightingly of peacock’s flesh, or any other venerable institution at a time when Fra Girolamo was teaching the disturbing doctrine that it was not the duty of the rich to be luxurious for the sake of the poor.”

Irony is applied to two young men, with totally different purposes; in one case it is directed against the youth himself; in the other, against an anticipated criticism of his conduct.

Fred Vincy belongs to the class of which Algernon Blancove is the most brilliant representative, and from which Evan Harrington made an early escape. He is persuaded that he “wouldn’t have been such a bad fellow if he had been rich.” But his destiny induces in him “a streak of misanthropic bitterness.”[225]

“To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and the inevitable heir to nothing in particular, while such men as

Mainwaring and Vyan--certainly life was a poor business, when a spirited young fellow, with a good appetite for the best of everything, had so poor an outlook.”

Of contrasting caliber is Adam Bede, whose vision is turned outward and even upward, instead of altogether inward; and whose survey causes a feeling of modesty rather than injured conceit.[226]

“Adam, I confess, was very susceptible to the influence of rank, and quite ready to give an extra amount of respect to every one who had more advantages than himself, not being a philosopher, or a proletaire with democratic ideas, but simply a stout-limbed clever carpenter with a large fund of reverence in his nature, which inclined him to admit all established claims unless he saw very clear grounds for questioning them.”

George Eliot was held in high esteem by George Meredith; and the two were indeed akin in outlook, and very much so in the matter of ironic usage, in spite of their wide difference in general style. But the Meredithian solution is at once more saturated and more subtle, combined with greater uniformity of effect. This, however, does not spell monotony, diversity being furnished by range of ideas and breadth of subject-matter. Meredith has one ironic mold, but into it he pours a procession of contents of great variety. The tone, it is unnecessary to say, is undilutedly masculine; so is Eliot’s, except for the presence of an element usually reckoned as feminine, and mentioned, by a curious coincidence, in Meredith’s approving characterization of a French writer. In making out his own preferred list with accompanying reason, he cites Renan, “for a delicate irony scarcely distinguishable from tenderness.”[227] In this quality Meredith was by no means lacking, but his ironic mood was inclined to the caustic and merciless.

One of his devices is to substitute for the old mock-heroic a new mock-syllogistic, more in accord with modern imagination. The great doctrine of Natural Selection is applied to human courtship, as exemplified by one of the Fittest.[228]

“Science thus--or it is better to say, an acquaintance with science--facilitates the cultivation of aristocracy. Consequently a successful pursuit and a wresting of her from a body of competitors, tells you that you are the best man. What is more, it tells the world so.

“Willoughby aired his amiable superlatives in the eye of Miss Middleton; he had a leg.”

Under the seductive opportunity of table talk Sir Willoughby again falls a victim to the inductive method. This time he is airing his opinion of the French, drawing an elaborate analogy from the character of a national sample now officiating in the Patterne kitchen. The general validity of his conclusion is admitted by his modest secretary:[229]

“‘A few trifling errors are of no consequence when you are in the vein of satire,’ said Vernon. ‘Be satisfied with knowing a nation in the person of a cook.’”

But Sir Willoughby still has twin peaks of eminence to surmount: one he achieves when he describes himself to Lætitia as a man of humor; and the other when he warns Clara to beware of marrying an egoist.

Perhaps the two best understudies in egoism are Wilfred Pole and Victor Radnor. Wilfred is satisfied with the talents and charm of his Emilia. And yet[230]

“It was mournful to think that Circumstances had not at the same time created the girl of noble birth, or with an instinct for spiritual elegance. But the world is imperfect.”

Both have lofty conceptions of loyalty and sacrifice. In the case of Wilfred,[231]

“He could pledge himself to eternity, but shrank from being bound to eleven o’clock on the morrow morning.”

Victor is convinced of his love for Nataly,[232]

“And he tested it to prove it by his readiness to die for her: which is heroically easier than the devotedly living, and has a weight of evidence in our internal Courts for surpassing the latter tedious performance.”

The occasion of the splendid housewarming at Lakelands is made into a text on the perils of feminism. In a crowded hall--[233]

“Chivalry stood. It is a breeched abstraction, sacrificing voluntarily and genially to the Fair, for a restoring of the balance between the sexes, that the division of good things be rather in the fair ones’ favor as they are to think: with the warning to them, that the establishment of their claim for equality puts an end to the priceless privileges of petticoats. Women must be mad, to provoke such a warning; and the majority of them submissively show their good sense.” (“With that innate submissiveness,” speaks up George Eliot, “of the goose, so beautifully corresponding to the strength of the gander.”)

Another evidence of bewildering perversity is equally apposite to the present moment of history. The Austrian Lieutenant Jenna is discoursing on the Italians and the habit of the captured of spending their enforced solitude in writing Memoirs:[234]

“My father said--the stout old Colonel--‘Prisons seem to make these Italians take an interest in themselves.’ ‘Oh!’ says my mother, ‘why can’t they be at peace with us?’ ‘That’s exactly the question,’ says my father, ‘we’re always putting to them.’ And so I say. Why can’t they let us smoke our cigars in peace?”

But England does not lag behind in the matter of the application of the intellect to practical questions. The country squires are excited over the approach of the open game season; moreover,--[235]

“The entire land (signifying all but all of those who occupy the situation of thinkers in it) may be said to have been exhaling the same thought in connection with September. Our England holds possession of a considerable portion of the globe, and it keeps the world in awe to see her bestowing so considerable a portion of intelligence upon her recreations. To prosecute them with her whole heart is an ingenious exhibition of her power.”

It is naturally the fate of the active to suffer from Philistine misapprehension, particularly when the activity is racial:[236]

“Foreigners pertinaciously misunderstand us. They have the barbarous habit of judging by results. Let us know ourselves better. It is melancholy to contemplate the intrigues, and vile designs, and vengeances of other nations; and still more so, after we have written so many pages of intelligible history, to see them attributed to us. Will it never be perceived that we do not sow the thing that happens?”

This rhetorical irony, which we have found so widely distributed, is a sign of temperament at the most, and at the least only of habit,--a mannerism of style. Philosophical irony, a sense of the irony of life, is an indicator of character and the whole interpretation of experience. The two kinds may or may not coincide. It happens, for instance, that the two great ironists who inclose the Victorian period like a pair of chronological brackets, illustrate them separately. Jane Austen is habitually ironic in speech, but no novel of hers manifests an idea of the irony of fate. Her situations are too simple, too blandly logical, to be devised by a Destiny either impishly malicious or cruelly malignant. But Thomas Hardy takes all his reasonable logic and bland simplicity out in language. He seldom introduces the caustic reflection. There is little of the acrid in the flavor of his style. It is all poured into the story. The conditions he portrays convey their own poignancy, and tell their own tale of gratuitous failure and superfluous sacrifice.

Of this sharp impression of life as consisting of the nearly-achieved or barely-failed, there are indications here and there in mid-century fiction, but no thoroughgoing exponent, because none of that unqualified pessimism which acknowledges irrationality as the presiding genius of the world. It is natural that in Disraeli, Brontë, Kingsley, circumstantial irony should be as snakes in Iceland; and that Lytton, Gaskell, Dickens, Thackeray, Reade, should furnish a pair of white crows apiece. It is interesting though also not astonishing to find that out of about three dozen culled examples, Peacock and Butler not counted because they do not work in the medium of normal circumstance, Meredith leads with nearly one-third the total amount, Eliot being a close second, and Trollope a lagging third. Yet these three are decidedly anti-ironic in general belief; shown both by actual testimony and by implication. The former comes, as would be supposed, from Meredith. Writing to a friend and alluding to the weakness of old age, he says,--[237]

“We who have loved the motion of legs and the sweep of the winds, we come to this. But for myself, I will own that it is the natural order. There is no irony in Nature.”

In his last novel he gives a backhanded thrust at the ironic philosophy in his favorite equivocal fashion:[238]

“We are convinced we have proof of Providence intervening when some terrific event of the number at its disposal accomplishes the thing and no more than the thing desired.”

In the same story the motive and emotion of the bridegroom is thus described:[239]

“A sour relish of the irony in his present position sharpened him to devilish enjoyment of it, as the finest form of loathing: * * * He had cried for Romance--here it was!”

But the author makes it clear that this irony is subjective. The objective complement to it arrives later, and its real name is Nemesis.

Subjective also is it in the one account we have from George Eliot:[240]

“But anyone watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots, sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on another, which tells like a calculated irony on the indifference or the frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced neighbor. Destiny stands by sarcastic with our _dramatis personæ_ folded in her hand.”

That is, our ignorance makes a dramatic irony out of a situation in itself a link in the logical chain of cause and effect.

The implication that to the Victorians life is on the whole rational rather than ironic is made by the fact that the ironic situations are incidental, and the conclusions are based on poetic justice, whether happy or tragic, and not on ironic injustice. It may be worth noting that these various situations seem divisible into three or four classes, and that such division serves to bring some order out of the chaos of their multiplicity.

There is first the irony already mentioned as dramatic, where ignorance is not bliss. Such is the case in Lytton’s _Alice_, when Maltravers falls in love with his own unknown daughter, an Œdipean tragedy being averted by timely information. A similar relationship with opposite effect is that of Harold Transome, exasperating with warnings of exposure the slippery scoundrel Jermyn, until he forces the incredible exposure of his own social position. Even more ironic is that behavior which in ignorant zeal precipitates the very calamity it strives to avoid. Thus does Mrs. Tulliver, “a hen taking to reflection on how to prevent Hodge from wringing her neck,” when she adroitly tries to persuade Wakem not to buy the Mill, thereby putting the notion of doing it into his head. Lady Glencora, in _Phineas Finn_, pleading with Madame Max not to marry the Duke of Omnium, unaware of her already made decision not to do so, very nearly meets with the same kind of gratuitous failure. Of a different order is the use of secret knowledge to extract an advantage from the ignorant adversary who misunderstands the allusions; as Sandra Belloni, arousing Mr. Pole’s enthusiasm for her as a daughter-in-law, good enough for any man indeed,--except his unsuspected self, who was the only one desired. At three fine banquets dramatic irony sits as an unwelcome guest: at Arthur Donnithorne’s birthday feast, where the warm tribute paid him by Adam Bede and Mr. Poyser would have turned to ashes in their mouths had they known the truth; at Mr. Vane’s dinner for Peg Woffington, at which his innocent wife appears just in time to assume all the honors to herself; and at the Jocelyn party, where the daughters of the great Mel have him to digest.

Another sort of irony comes from the reversed wheel of fortune. This is also dramatic, being in fact the keynote of the mediæval idea of tragedy, though all such reversal is not ironic. Authur Clennam in the Marshalsea might be an instance, albeit less perfect than William Dorrit fancying himself there when he was really in the perfectly appointed Merdle dining room. There is a double reversal of expectation that turns Fred Vincy into a passable success, through being cheated out of his legacy, while Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate are thwarted into comparative failure. Another subdivision is that complete fall in which the victim does, and gladly, the thing he has previously sworn he would in no wise ever do; witness Sir Willoughby in triumph over the winning of the lady with brains, afterward to learn “the nature of that possession in the woman who is our wife.”

Then there is the granted desire; as if mother Fate hearing her children beg for poisoned candy said, Well, take it then, and see how you like it. Lady Mason, in _Orley Farm_, Mrs. Transome, Sir Richard Feverel, are all devoted parents who are allowed to have their own way in plans for their children, and merely asked to abide by the consequences. The death of Raffles comes most opportunely for Mr. Bulstrode, and seals his doom.

The irony of the lost opportunity is hard to distinguish from just retribution. Philip Beaufort, killed on his way to a belated deed of duty to his family; Trollope’s Claverings and Bertrams; Godfrey Cass, Lord Fleetwood, Edward Blancove, all are made to feel the ironic undercurrent of that water the mill will never grind with, because it has passed.

In addition to these _exempla_, attention might be called to a trio of ironic titles: _Great Expectations_, _Beauchamp’s Career_, and _One of Our Conquerers_.

Though all the novelists indulge at times in the use of irony, Meredith alone offers a definition. In one place in the _Essay on Comedy_, he characterizes it as the honeyed sting which leaves the victim in doubt as to having been hurt. In another, he expands the idea:

“Irony is the humour of satire; it may be savage as in Swift, with a moral object, or sedate, as in Gibbon, with a malicious. The foppish irony fretting to be seen, and the irony which leers, that you shall not mistake its intention, are failures in satiric effort pretending to the treasures of ambiguity.”

Some there are who are not quite guiltless of these failures, but Meredith is not one of them. He is unique also, except for the corroboration of George Eliot, in making the ironic interpretation of life in itself an object of satire, in so far as it is brought forward as an excuse for our deficiencies, for then it betrays a certain weakness in our mental processes. For this he has one direct spokesman and two or three dramatic examples. The former is the incisive Redworth, who is exasperated at this vicarious refuge claimed by needy human nature.[241]

“‘Upon my word,’ he burst out, ‘I should like to write a book of Fables, showing how donkeys get into grinding harness, and dogs lose their bones, and fools have their sconces cracked, and all run jabbering of the irony of Fate, to escape the annoyance of tracing the causes. And what are they? Nine times out of ten, plain want of patience, or some debt for indulgence, * * * It’s the seed we sow, individually or collectively.’”

Chief of the latter--the dramatic examples--is a youth who, just returning from his father’s funeral, with bitter prospects ahead, encounters a being more wretched than himself, a forsaken young woman shelterless, and desperately ill.[242]

“Evan had just been accusing the heavens of conspiring to disgrace him. Those patient heavens had listened, as is their wont. They had viewed and not been disordered by his mental frenzies. It is certainly hard that they do not come down to us, and condescend to tell us what they mean, and be dumb-foundered by the perspicuity of our arguments--the argument, for instance, that they have not fashioned us for the science of the shears, and do yet impel us to wield them.”

A little later in the same story is a bit of “eloquent and consoling philosophy” on a happy juxtaposition of the meat and the eaters.[243]

“A thing has come to pass which we feel to be right! The machinery of the world, then, is not entirely dislocated: there is harmony, on one point, among the mysterious powers who have to do with us.”

Another deeply meditative young man is Algernon Blancove. On the very point of turning over a new leaf, he has the misfortune to lose a wager of a thousand pounds,--which he did not have in the first place.[244]

“A rage of emotions drowned every emotion in his head, and when he got one clear from the mass, it took the form of a bitter sneer at Providence, for cutting off his last chance of reforming his conduct and becoming good. What would he not have accomplished, that was brilliant, and beautiful, and soothing, but for this dead set against him!”

With a gentler touch Clotilde is pictured, on hearing of the disaster to Alvin, as venting the “laugh of the tragic comedian.”[245]

“She laughed. The world is upside down--a world without light, or pointing finger, or affection for special favorites, and therefore bereft of all mysterious and attractive wisdom, a crazy world, a corpse of a world--if this be true!”

One more angle has Meredith from which to view this subject, and this shows up the absurdity of the opposite type,--the superior philosopher who disdains to apply the ironic explanation to his own affairs, but prides himself on his detached, Olympian, ironic view of the cosmos. This spirit is incarnate in the wise youth, Adrian Harley.[246]

“He had no intimates except Gibbon and Horace, and the society of these fine aristocrats of literature helped him to accept humanity as it had been, and was; a supreme ironic procession, with laughter of Gods in the background. Why not laughter of mortals also?”

From the tranquillity of this calm eminence he observes the mortal excitement produced by the news of Richard’s marriage.[247]

“When one has attained that felicitous point of wisdom from which one sees all mankind to be fools, the diminutive objects may make what new moves they please, one does not marvel at them; their sedateness is as comical as their frolic, and their frenzies more comical still.”

Whether or not there is such an actuality as an Ironic Fate, upon whom mortals may blame their failures, or against whom they are doomed to strive in vain, is as speculative a question as any in metaphysics. The ironist is as dogmatic as the theist; and he no doubt gets as much satisfaction from his denial of a rationally ordered universe, as the other does from his assertion of it. To be able to fling back a jest into the face of the Sphinx is undeniably a poor equivalent for guessing her riddle, but it at least helps to take the edge off her inscrutability.

In his _La Satire en France_, Lenient makes irony the opposite of enthusiasm, and emphasizes the fact and the necessity of their perennial alternation, like the recurrence of day and night. It would indeed be a fearful world whose passive, indifferent night was succeeded by no bright, clear, active day. But it would also be a wearisome world whose glare never merged into the refreshing season of dusky shadows, quiet half-tones, and twinkling stars. It is well that they are reciprocal and that “_sous ces noms divers reproduèra l’eternelle antethèse qui s’agite au fond de toute sociêtê_.”

## PART III

OBJECTS

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