- plete fall in which the victim does, and gladly, the thing
he has previously sworn he would in no wise ever do; witness Sir Willoughby in triumph over the winning of the lady with brains, afterward to learn "the nature of that possession in the woman who is our wife."
Then there is the granted desire; as if mother Fate hearing her children beg for poisoned candy said, Well, take it then, and see how you like it. Lady Mason, in Orley Farm, Mrs. Transome, Sir Richard Feverel, are all devoted parents who are allowed to have their own way in plans for their children, and merely asked to abide by the consequences. The death of Raffles comes most opportunely for Mr. Bulstrode, and seals his doom.
The irony of the lost opportunity is hard to distinguish from just retribution. Philip Beaufort, killed on his way to a belated deed of duty to his family; Trollope's Claverings and Bertrams; Godfrey Cass, Lord Fleetwood, Edward Blancove, all are made to feel the ironic undercurrent of that water the mill will never grind with, because it has passed.
In addition to these exempla, attention might be called to a trio of ironic titles: Great Expectations, Beauchamp's Career, and One of Our Conquerers.
Though all the novelists indulge at times in the use of irony, Meredith alone offers a definition. In one place in the Essay on Comedy, he characterizes it as the honeyed sting which leaves the victim in doubt as to having been hurt. In another, he expands the idea:
"Irony is the humour of satire; it may be savage as in Swift,
with a moral object, or sedate, as in Gibbon, with a malicious.
The foppish irony fretting to be seen, and the irony which
leers, that you shall not mistake its intention, are failures in
satiric effort pretending to the treasures of ambiguity."
