and that Lytton, Gaskell, Dickens, Thackeray, Reade, should furnish a pair of white crows apiece. It is interesting though also not astonishing to find that out of about three dozen culled examples, Peacock and Butler not counted because they do not work in the medium of normal circumstance, Meredith leads with nearly one-third the total amount, Eliot being a close second, and Trollope a lagging third. Yet these three are decidedly anti-ironic in general belief; shown both by actual testimony and by implication. The former comes, as would be supposed, from Meredith. Writing to a friend and alluding to the weakness of old age, he says,—[1]
"We who have loved the motion of legs and the sweep of
the winds, we come to this. But for myself, I will own that it is
the natural order. There is no irony in Nature."
In his last novel he gives a backhanded thrust at the
ironic philosophy in his favorite equivocal fashion:[2]
"We are convinced we have proof of Providence intervening
when some terrific event of the number at its disposal accomplishes
the thing and no more than the thing desired."
In the same story the motive and emotion of the bridegroom
is thus described:[3]
"A sour relish of the irony in his present position sharpened
him to devilish enjoyment of it, as the finest form of loathing:
- * * He had cried for Romance—here it was!"
But the author makes it clear that this irony is subjective.
The objective complement to it arrives later, and its real
name is Nemesis.
