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:[1]
"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 modi-*
- ↑ A Second Century Satirist, 187. A translation by W. D. Sheldon.
