IRONY.
" BOLINGBROKE was a holy man,"—that, says Dr. Johnson, is an example of irony. For once the great man nodded, since this bald statement, though it sets forth one of the Doctor's many hatreds, is a very foolish specimen of its class. Irony, in brief, is a subtler trick than the mere writing of good for bad ; it is an artifice of style, the expression of a temperament, the deliberate and delicate masking of a plain meaning. But it is not, and has never been, a common interchange of opposite words. For instance, you cannot call Artemus Ward a master of irony when he flashes the red flag in your face : "This is writ sarcastick."
Te frame a definition of irony is almost impossible, since the figure has been so variously employed. A hinted con- cealment of the truth either from the personages of a drama, or from the drama's audience, is essential, and this concealment permits us to attribute the same quality to Swift and Sophocles alike. It is (Edipus the King's ignorance of impending doom, for example, which imparts an ironic character to the Sophoclean masterpiece. The audience knows, what the hero of the play knows not, that the King's honourable anxiety to discover the criminal who pollutes the State will recoil upon himself. Every speech of CEdipus has one meaning for him, another for the audience, and it is this contrast between the word and the sense that makes the irony of the situation. The Socratic irony, again, was different in kind ; it was no ignorance of the past or future ; it was rather a lack of knowledge assumed by the omniscient, that his -opponents might the more easily be entrapped. But the same -contrast is there ; the Greek philosopher pretended to know nothing, because he was at all points superior to the Sophists ; and his smile was as ironic as the constant smile which played upon the face of Voltaire. So the irony of modern times is marked by a similar contrast. Words and sense are opposed, though with a different end and purpose. The enraged satirist states what is not in order that what is shall be more violently expressed. Black may be represented as grey, or even white, but the representation must be effected by the spirit as well as by the word. When Voltaire tells you that in the face of unexampled disaster all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, he is preaching a sermon against the folly of optimism. When Swift sets forth the reasons why the abolition of Christianity " may be attended with some incon- veniences," the very framework of the essay proves that in his view Christianity may never be abolished, and that the reasons given are one and all frivolous. But the perfect master of irony must never be untrue to his method. The inverted seriousness must be sustained unto the end. One word of direct information, a single hint of didacticism, will destroy, the effect of what might have been a masterpiece. " Candide " itself would have perished had its author returned even for a breathing-space to the common earth. But he never returns until the last phrase, for he knew that the lan- guage of irony is a language apart, in which thought, to be understood, should be freely and consistently translated. Shifting our metaphor, we may say that to sustain irony is to change the terms of life's equation.
Who, then, are the masters of irony ? Shakespeare, who knew all things, practised the artifice with the utmost skill. While Sophocles is matched in Othello and Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice, the Antony of Julius Cesar might rival Doctor Pangloss. (The passage wherein Portia declares, with the full consciousness of what is to come, that "there is no power in" Venice can alter a decree established," and Shylock acclaims a " Daniel come to judgment, yea, a Daniel," satisfies all the conditions of the art, as it was prac- tised at Athens.) But Shakespeare, it he touched irony, as he touched all forms of humour, with the finger of genius, was not a professed master of it. He merely stooped from the height of a serene intelligence to sport with satire. And it is not with him that we associate this figure of flouts and jibes. Yet it is in England that the art has been followed with most conspicuous success. With a single exception—and that may be the greatest—the masterpieces of irony belong to our own literature. We have already mentioned " Candide," the miracle of wit, in which word • and sense are ever at variance ; and if the ironic palm were to be awarded to one work, the award would not be doubtful. For nothing in the whole range of letters is so astonish- ing as the perfect consistency of Voltaire's satire. From beginning to end there is no note of hesitancy; the characters are wrapped in the very atmosphere of irony ; they-speakthe same cunning language without flaw or failure ; and you lay aside the book in the full consciousness that you have assisted at a unique display of legerdemain. "It •seems to have been written in one sentence," said a critic ; and with perfect truth he might have said ia tie°. For the last phrase -breaks the spell,—the immortal " Il faut cultiver notre jardin." All that precedes might truly appear one sentence ; this • parting injunction is absolutely separate. It is written in perfect seriousness and with no thought of an inverted meaning. " faut 'cultiver notre jardin "—with those words does Voltaire leave the satire he has sustained, and point the moral of 'his own irony. One work, however, does not awake a literature, and against Voltaire's single masterpiece we may weigh the whole achievement of Swift. Now, Swift was born with irony in his blood. His temperament compelled him to approach truth by its opposite, and there is no one of his works which does not bear testimony alike to his supreme genius for the most difficult of literary artifices and his savage hatred for . • meanness and stupidity.
The irony, of Swift and Voltaire is the irony of conviction ; there is also an art of ironic presentation: When Fielding wrote the "History of Jonathan Wild," he had no need-topreach so obvious a lesson as the sacredness of property, nor to en- courage the crime of highway robbery. He was only concerned to paint the portrait of a great man, and he chose the thief- catcher for his subject, in order doubly to dazzle the reader with an amazing contrast. Nor does he, any more than Voltaire, descend from his purpose. In his hands vice and virtue change places ; the folly of Heartfree is a perfect foil to the villainy of Jonathan Wild ; while the one is incapable of wickedness, the other is superior to a good action ; and so evenly is the balance held that the reader's mind is never befogged, and never for an instant misunderstands the author's ambition, In brief, the presentation of the hero, being ironic, is a pure triumph of the intelligence, which is concerned for the moment not with morals but with wit, not with the facts of life but with the delicate art of grotesque portraiture. And Fielding was not without distinguished rivals in his own field. De Quincey's " Murder as a Fine Art " • may be set side by side with " Jonathan Wild," while " Barry Lyndon " is sustained at the master's own levet. .of passionless satire. Thackeray, maybe, but half understood the excellence of his own work, when he told his daughter not to read it. " You will not like it," he said ; yet nothing is needed to the appreciation of Barry save the.proper tem- perament. And this brings us to the hatred of irony pro- fessed by the most of men. For irony is, as we said last week in writing of Swift, the boomerang of literature, which returns upon him who wields it. Like the honourable cynicism, which often masks a tender sensibility, it presents a truth of conviction, or a truth of portraiture in an inverted guise. So, like cynicism, it is doomed to misunderstanding. Much has been written, for instance, of Mr. George Meredith's unpopu- larity. This novelist, you are told, has acquired the apprecia- tion which was his due after thirty years of patience. And many reasons are assigned for the tardiness of 'the honour paid him. He is obscure, says one ; he is fantanie, says another ; yet we believe that he too has been misunderstood, because he has always aimed at an ironic presentation. What are HarrY Richmond" and "Evan Harrington," save experiments _in ironY,=not COn- sistent like " Candide," but interspersed with passages of true sensibility 7 What else is " The Egoist " than a portrait ironic as "Jonathan Wild" ? This, then, is the secret of the world's neglect of Mr. Meredith. He, too, masks his meaning, or con- ceals from his characters their true villainy. Sir Willoughby Patterne, in brief, is perfection in his own eyes, and the casual reader does not easily endure the deliberate complacency of a personage whom he condemns.
From the irony of Sophocles to the irony of Mr. Meredith is a long journey, yet each is distinguished by the same pur- posed and purposeful -contrast between the truth and the phrase. But irony is so profoundly:a part of human nature, that we detect it in life as well as in letters. Where in literature could you better exemplify the irony of fate'than in the spectacle of Disraeli, once despised, governing with an iron hand the aristocracy of England .
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