There is another form of irony more surprising than this, or at least more startling; for the surprise in Swift may be said to be constant. It is when the writer gives a comic turn to an apparently grave passage. It is a favourite with the Italians, from whom it has been imitated by a writer who has equalled their satirists in wit, and surpassed them in poetry. I need not say that I allude to the author of Don Juan. I will usher in a sample or two from that work by a well-known passage from Tassoni, the author of the mock-heroic poem entitled the Rape of the Bucket. (Secchia Rapita). The blow aimed in the concluding line is at the pretended Petrarchists, or herd of writers of love-verses, with which Italy was then overrun ;

Del celeste Monton già il Sole uscito
Saettava co' rai le nubi algenti;
Parean stellati i campi, e il ciel fiorito,
E sul tranquillo mar dormiano i venti ;
Sol Zefiro ondeggiar fece sul lito

L'erbetta molle, e i fior vaghi e ridenti;
E s'udian gli usignuoli al primo albore,
E gli asini cantar versi d'amore.

Canto i. st. 6.

Now issuing from the Ram, the sun forth showers
On the cold clouds his radiant archery;

Earth shone in turn like heav'n, the skies like flowers,
And every wind fell sleeping on the sea;

Only the Zephyr with his gentle powers

Mov'd the soft herbage on the flowery lea:
Nightingales murmur'd still their loves and pities,
And jackasses commenc'd their amorous ditties.

The author of Don Juan is not so merely abrupt as this; the step into which he beguiles you is not so jarring; but what he loses in violence of surprise, he gains in agreeableness. Thus, in speaking of the pedantic Spanish lady ;

Her favourite science was the mathematical;

Her noblest virtue was her magnanimity;

Her wit (she sometimes tried at wit) was Attic all;
Her serious sayings darken'd to sublimity :

In short, in all things she was fairly what I call
A prodigy ;-her morning dress was dimity.

Canto i. st. 12.

He pored upon the leaves, and on the flowers,

And heard a voice in all the winds; and then
He thought of wood-nymphs and immortal bowers,
And how the goddesses came down to men :
He miss'd the pathway, he forgot the hours;
And when he look'd upon his watch again,
He found how much old time had been a winner-
He also found that he had lost his dinner.

Ibid. st. 94.

Epigrammatic Wit may be held to belong to this form; though in general it announces itself by its title and brevity, and thus substitutes expectation for surprise ;-a higher principle in great things, but not in small. Here follows, how

ever, an epigram of a very startling kind. It is a

:

remonstrance addressed to a lady :

When late I attempted your passion to prove,

Why were you so deaf to my prayers?
Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love;

But why did you kick me down stairs?

This kind of surprise, in its preceding form, is connected with another species of irony, the Mockheroic in general, or Raillery in the shape of Poetic Elevation.

This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,
Nourished two locks.

Rape of the Lock, Canto 2.

Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea.

Happy the man, who void of care and strife,
In silken or in leathern purse retains
A splendid shilling.

Ibid. Canto 3.

Philips.

Drayton, in his Nymphidia, or Court of Faery, has an amusing description of a rider, who turns and winds a fiery "earwig." The best mockheroical epigram I am acquainted with is one to a similar purpose on an ant. I quote from

memory:

High mounted on an ant, Nanus the tall
Dared its whole fire, and got a dreadful fall.
Under th' unruly beast's proud feet he lies,

All torn; but yet with generous ardour cries,
"Behold me, gods! and thou, base world, laugh on,

For thus I fall, and thus fell Phaëton."

But this species of wit is too well known to need dwelling upon. It may be useful, however, to observe, by way of caution against the mistakes of

such students in poetry as think "classicality" everything, and who write a great deal of mock-heroic without knowing it, that one of its secrets consists in an application of old metaphors, inversions, and other conventional and ancient forms of speech to modern languages. Much wit in prose is enhanced by a scholarly acquaintance with Greek and Latin etymology, and a corresponding use of words in their primitive and thoroughly applicable senses—an accomplishment turned to special account by Sydney Smith. But take away inversions, the metaphorical habit, and other Virgilianisms from conventional poetry, and you destroy two-thirds of the serious verses of the last century. They are sometimes admirably used, for purposes of banter, by wits who are guilty of the very fault when they become grave. Thus Peter Pindar, who is as dull in his serious poetry as he is laughable in his

comic :

Once at our house, amidst our Attic feasts,
We likened our acquaintances to beasts;

(It is Boswell, speaking of Johnson.)

As, for example, some to calves and hogs,
And some to bears and monkeys, cats and dogs.
We said (which charm'd the Doctor much, no doubt)

His mind was like or elephants the snout;

That could pick pins up, yet possess'd the vigour

For trimming well the jacket of a tiger.

C

Bozzy and Piozzy.

And Dr. King, on the perils of brown-paper plasters attendant upon athletic exercises :

He that of feeble nerves and joints complains,
From nine-pins, coits, and from trap-ball abstains;
Cudgels avoids, and shuns the wrestling-place,

Lest vinegar resound his loud disgrace.

Art of Cookery.

Vinegar resounding" is very ridiculous; but not more so than the use of the same classical metaphor on a thousand occasions, where the presence of Fame's trumpet or of the ancient lyre is out of the question.

But the most agreeable form of irony, especially when carried to any length, is that which betrays the absurdity it treats of (or what it considers such) by an air of bonhomie and good faith, as if the thing ridiculed were simplest matter of course, and not at all exposed by the pretensions with which it is artfully set on a level. It is that of Marot and La Fontaine; of Pulci, Berni, and Voltaire. In the elder of these Italians, and in the two oldest of the Frenchmen, it is best assumed, as far as regards simplicity; but in Berni and Voltaire it is most laughable, because by a certain excess and caricature of indifference it gives its cue to the reader, and so makes him a party to the joke, as rich comic actors do with their audiences. Such is Voltaire's exquisite banter on War, in which he says, that a monarch picks up a parcel of men "who have nothing to do,