ENGLISH IRONY
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—There are few things more mystifying to the foreigner or more satisfying to the student of national psychology than the vein of popular irony which crops out again and again in history in the English common man.
Shakespeare, of course, knew and loved it : witness (one example among many) Hamlet, Act iv., Sc. 6 : " FIRST SAILOR : God bless you, sir. HORATIO : Let him bless thee too.
FIRST SAILOR : He shall, sir, an 't please him."
That nonchalant mariner is the very ancestor of the troops who went into action singing " The Bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a- ling " : and to-day their younger brothers are facing the severest economic crisis of modern times with the chorus " Ain't it grand to be blooming well dead." England is all right.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Magdalen College School, Oxford. R. KENNARD DAVIS.
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