"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
