quently does such scant justice to Chaucer and Burns. For both the humor and the poetical quality of these authors are to be found often in the large conception rather than in the specific passage. Even in the Shakespearean passages just cited, these elements are felt only when one has a grasp on the situation or the character as a whole, and are by no means dependent on mere felicity of phrase. This is still more marked in the field of comedy. Falstaff is surely a vital poetical creation, intensely conceived and highly idealized; but it is not in the intention of the author to make him talk poetry, as, say, Perdita or Lear talks poetry.

Nor is this entirely to be accounted for by the fact that these are characters in drama, and must speak in character. The same thing holds of much of Chaucer, of the more realistic descriptions of the pilgrims in the Prologue, and of those tales that are especially humorous. In The Jolly Beggars, too, the "splendid and puissant" effect which Arnold felt, but did not analyze, is the result of the elevating of sordid realistic description through intense imaginative sympathy, combined with a buoyant hilarity. In such work both humor and poetry need room, and we search it in

vain for those

jewels five-words-long

That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time,
Sparkle forever.

IV

The form of humor known as irony has certain peculiarities that call for special treatment. The humorous element in irony lies in the incongruity between the apparent and the real. In irony as a mere figure of speech, the apparent is the superficial meaning of an utterance, the real is the hidden intention of the speaker. Thus in Twelfth Night (Iv, i, 1), the Clown meets Sebastian and mistakes him for Cesario (i.e., Viola), and the following dialogue ensues :

Clo. Will you make me believe that I am not sent for you? Seb. Go to, go to, thou art a foolish fellow; let me be clear of thee.

Clo. Well held out, i' faith! No, I do not know you; nor I am not sent to you by my lady, to bid you come speak with her; nor your name is not Master Cesario; nor this is not my nose neither. Nothing that is so is so.

In such instances, the humor, such as it is, is obvious enough; but like the small boy's "You 're a dandy," it is used mainly for emphasis, and commonly has nothing to do with

poetry. Considerably more is involved in what is called the irony of events, or irony of circumstances. Here the incongruity lies in the contrast between the superficial reading of the trend of events, and the actual outcome, often thought of as predestined, in which case the phrase, "irony of Fate," is applied. Periods of great political turmoil, like the Wars of the Roses, or the French Revolution, are full of this kind of irony, cases in which the triumphal procession turns out to be a ride to disgrace or death. The old world is strewn with instances of monumental irony, trophies bearing inscriptions setting forth the invincibility of warriors who have long since met defeat. Dramatic irony is merely the result of a device by which the playwright arranges events with a view to this double interpretation, the dramatis personæ taking these events in one sense, while the audience knows that the reverse is the truth. The fifth act of Romeo and Juliet opens with a notable instance of this: Romeo is in Mantua, and with the following words opens the scene after that in which the Capulets have been mourning the death of Juliet, so that the audience is fully conscious of the desperate state of the case :

If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep,
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand.
My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne,
And all this day an unaccustom'd spirit
Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.
I dreamt my lady came and found me dead
Strange dream, that gives a dead man leave to think !
And breath'd such life with kisses in my lips,
That I reviv'd, and was an emperor.
Ah me! how sweet is love itself possess'd,
When but love's shadows are so rich in joy!

And while he speaks, his man Balthazar is at the threshold with the fatal news from Verona. This is a clear instance of dramatic irony of the tragic type. It can be reversed, and the character may anticipate an unfortunate ending, while the audience knows that things are after all to go well with him. Thus in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Silvia, who secretly returns the love of Valentine, has him write a love-letter on her behalf to a mythical rival, bids him keep it because it is not passionate enough, and amuses the audience with a double-edged dialogue until, with the aid of the clown, Valentine gradually realizes that his lady has been all the while making love to him through himself. This is dramatic irony of the comic type.

In these later instances, whether of the irony of real events or of dramatic irony, we are much closer to poetry than in merely verbal irony; for a full appreciation of the humor, grim or pathetic or merry, calls for the exercise of the imagination in holding up for simultaneous observation the two pictures, the one that fills the eye of the victim, and the one that represents the truth. In the case of tragic irony especially, the humor tends to strengthen the effect of the fundamental tragedy in the situation, as we have just seen that more direct forms of humor do in other cases. Our emotion at the spectacle of Romeo, setting out on his fatal ride from Mantua to the tomb of Juliet, is made much more poignant by the dramatist's showing him buoyed up with a groundless exhilaration. It reminds us of the futility of human attempts to read the future; of the hopelessness of the strife between the individual and circumstance; and it raises the episode to the level of the universal.

Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt.

We see, then, that in this form of irony also humor and imagination may unite to serve each other and to intensify the poetical effect. But it must at the same time be admitted that