into the closet where the other wives were with their heads off. She never dropped the key, or stained it with blood; and her brothers were quite right in finishing Bluebeard, the cowardly brute ! Yes, Caroline of Brunswick was innocent; and Madame Laffarge never poisoned her husband; and Mary of Scotland never blew up hers; and poor Sophia Dorothea was never unfaithful; and Eve never took the apple-it was a cowardly fabrication of the serpent's." 1 In the following the irony consists in describing evil in terms belonging to the good: "It may well be conceived that, at such a time, such a nature as that of Marlborough would riot in the very luxury of baseness. His former treason, thoroughly furnished with all that makes infamy exquisite, placed him under the disadvantage which attends every artist from the time that he produces a masterpiece. Yet his second great stroke may excite wonder, even in those who appreciate all the merit of the first. Lest his admirers should be able to say that at the time of the Revolution he had betrayed his King from any other than selfish motives, he proceeded to betray his country." One or two further remarks on the figure Irony may here be made. 1. A passage not predominantly ironical in tone may be made more spirited by an occasional ironical touch, which, being less obtrusive, is correspondingly more graceful. Young writers who employ this device often betray their anxiety that their irony may not be missed by marking such touches with an interrogation-point enclosed in parenthesis; but this is generally quite needless, and in poor taste. EXAMPLES. "He leaned forward suddenly, and clutched Pete by the throat, and the old man and Solomon were fain to interfere actively to prevent that doughty member of the family from being throttled on the spot. Pending the interchange of these amenities, Rick Tyler lay motionless on the ground." 8. —66 He [Browning] partially failed; and the British public, with its accustomed generosity, and in order, I suppose, to encourage the others, has never ceased girding at him, because forty-two years ago he 1 THACKERAY, The Four Georges, p. 16. 2 MACAULAY, Essay on Hallam's Constitutional History. 8 MISS MURFRee (Charles EGBERT CRADDOCK), Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains, p. 160. published, at his own charges, a little book of two hundred and fifty pages, which even such of them as were then able to read could not understand." 1 2. Irony, more especially in its modified form of satire or innuendo, is an edge-tool of which the writer needs to be very careful. Used habitually, or with zest, it begets a captious, cynical spirit which puts one out of touch with large and noble ideals. Further it almost inevitably gives to writing an element of offense to simple and straightforward minds; they are afraid of a statement that scores them and gives them no chance to reply. A man may make himself dreaded in that way, may gain a reputation for keenness and penetration, but he sacrifices something far more valuable. Even Thackeray, kind-hearted as his friends know him to have been, contracted such an inveterate habit of satire, on certain subjects, that he is apologized for fully as much as he is praised. II. Animus of Word and Figure. -The emotional figures hitherto recounted seem to our modern taste rather forced and declamatory; as overt and constructed figures they take themselves too seriously and insistently; and there is a very prevalent tendency to soften them down to humorous uses or to subtle touches, rather than bear weight upon them. Nowadays, partly because literature is less emotional, partly because the art of putting things is both more delicately managed and more quickly responded to, more is left to suggestion, the reader's emotion is played upon or awakened indirectly, not so much by obvious means as by a tone and animus that resides in the whole passage. This is a very pervasive and Protean feature of literary art, of which the following are the more prominent and outlying aspects. 1 AUGUSTINE BIRRELL, Obiter Dicta, p. 91. The Spirit of a Comparison. In addition to the illustrative value of simile or metaphor, a delicate revelation of the writer's mood or feeling is often made through the choice of the object to which the matter in hand is compared. Thus the figure may disparage or elevate, may convey contempt or connote admiration or poke fun, and thus induce in the reader a touch of the same mood. EXAMPLES. -1. Of Simile. With the following passage it is natural to associate sublimity; this feeling, in fact, is stronger than the illustrative value: "On the other side, Satan, alarmed, Collecting all his might, dilated stood, Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved: His stature reached the sky, and on his crest The following connotes Ruskin's feeling of contempt for the object described: "We have got into the way, among our other modern wretched ness, of trying to make windows of leaf diapers, and of strips of twisted red and yellow bands, looking like the patterns of currant jelly on the top of Christmas cakes; but every casement of old glass contained a saint's history."2 — The following evidently indulges in a sly laugh at its object : "The unwonted lines which momentary passion had ruled in Mr. Pickwick's clear and open brow, gradually melted away, as his young friend spoke, like the marks of a black-lead pencil beneath the softening influence of India rubber."3 2. Of Metaphor. The following both illustrates the manner of an action and conveys a disparaging estimate of its character: "Pierre Bayle wrote enormous folios, one sees not on what motive principle; he flowed on forever, a mighty tide of ditch-water; and even died flowing, with the pen in his hand.”4— The following, by a double meaning in the trope-word, conveys a sly innuendo: "Sentences of the same calibre, some even of far larger bore, we have observed in this and other works of the same author.'-5 1 MILTON, Paradise Lost, Book iv, 11. 985-989. 2 RUSKIN, Two Paths, p. 101. 8 DICKENS, Pickwick Papers, Chap. xv. 5 DE QUINCEY, Literary Criticism, p. 206. must In the employment of figure a sound sense of humor and congruity in other words, a sane literary sense always be present, or in some lapse of taste the comparison may flat the note, or introduce unintentionally some uncongenial or ludicrous suggestion. It is eminently here that the fineness of a writer's literary endowment shows. EXAMPLES. — When, for instance, a young writer says of John Quincey Adams's statesmanship that it was as pure as a lily, the figure may in part illustrate, but it does not really belong with the idea statesmanship, it is more congruous with more delicate ideas. once heard a clergyman, endeavoring to describe pictorially some great heaps of white summer cloud, say that they looked like immense great balls of popcorn. The picture was successful; but —. The Key of Words. This expression, adopted from Robert Louis Stevenson,' suggests that in a masterfully written passage there is a certain relation of words to each other, by which they aid each other in maintaining a congruous emotional level; they comport with a mood of homeliness or severe dignity, of contempt or whimsey, of enthusiasm or meditative pensiveness. This key of words is kept fine and unerring only by skill in the various strata or levels of the vocabulary; a writer must be at home in the dialect of beauty or bluntness, of grace or coarseness, and know not only the denotation but the feel, the congenial mood, of his word. EXAMPLES. There is a scale of expression by which the same idea or act may be coarsened to various depths; as is exemplified in the expressions "to become intoxicated,"" to get drunk," coarsest of all, "to get full." -A whole vocabulary of disparaging words is thus available, as poetaster, criticaster, pulpiteer, fellow, manikin, and the like; e.g. "It is time for even the fiery pulpiteers to pause and reflect," where we know well the writer's feeling toward the clergymen mentioned. One of the most serviceable forms of this connotation is in a kind of reduction of the idea to its lowest or boldest terms; e.g. "A fool he was, if you will; but so is a sovereign a fool, that will give half a principality for a little crystal as big as a pigeon's egg, and called a diamond: so is a 1 See above, p. 15, footnote. "1 wealthy nobleman a fool, that will face danger or death, and spend half his life, and all his tranquility, caballing for a blue riband; so is a Dutch merchant a fool, that hath been known to pay ten thousand crowns for a tulip." How such words may color a passage, forming a key or scheme of expression, may be seen in the following: "What spectacle is more august than that of a great king in exile? Who is more worthy of respect than a brave man in misfortune? Mr. Addison has painted such a figure in his noble piece of Cato. But suppose fugitive Cato fuddling himself at a tavern with a wench on each knee, a dozen faithful and tipsy companions of defeat, and a landlord calling out for his bill; and the dignity of misfortune is straightway lost. The Historical Muse turns away shamefaced from the vulgar scene, and closes the door -on which the exile's unpaid drink is scored up upon him and his pots and his pipes, and the tavernchorus which he and his friends are singing." 2 On the side of the connotation of idea, which in fact often blends with the connotation of emotion, this subject has already been treated under the head of Coloring due to Association; see above, p. 93, which section ought to be studied along with this. Reserve, or Understatement. One result of the more delicate literary art of our day is the frequent custom of describing intense or exciting facts in studiously mild terms, but with such connotation as to lay the hint of it on the reader's imagination, trusting to that to supply the commensurate realizing mood. This reserve of statement is thus in a sense the opposite of the overt figures of emotion. Instead of exhibiting a great passion of excitement and by violent language pulling the reader up to it, it works as it were to keep the reader's emotion in advance of the expressed idea, by sending his thoughts out toward a generously suggested effect or situation. 3 A principle so broad as this is hard to cover by typical examples. One of the most striking ways of understatement is by LITOTES, which suggests its intended idea by negating its opposite; connoting at the same time an animus of inten2 Ib., Book i, Chap. i. 1 THACKERAY, Henry Esmond, Book iii, Chap. ii. 3 The connection of litotes with the double negative will come up for further mention; see below, p. 271. |