Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/170

 complication would put him into strange behavior; he did not know exactly what, but he perceived it coming on. Such a man estimates himself more shrewdly than the crowd imagines. He was aware of a mind that over-refined and idealized, and of a disposition to avoid too close realities. Any hint of nature or society sufficed to sequester him in a monologue. But now he felt some modification passing through him; it is scarcely yet articulate, but it is inevitable to a man of his quality. Hamlet may call his mood by whatever phrases suit the different emergencies; but, in the main, it is the breaking-up of his mind's customary exercise into ironical scorn at discovering the rottenness of Denmark.

The Greek word [Greek: eirôneia], whence our Irony is derived with its special meaning, had not yet been modernly grafted on the Saxon stem. Ben Jonson says:—

"Most Socratic lady! Or, if you will, ironick!"

For the words irony, ironick, were at first used in English, and quite sparingly, to express the method of Socrates in conducting an argument; that is, by eliciting from an opponent his own refutation by asking him misleading questions. The words, in any sense, are not found in Shakspeare. Lord Bacon, in one instance, uses irony nearly in the modern sense; and that is Socratic only so far as a thing is said with an intent the reverse of its ostensible meaning.

The other passage upon which the theory of premedi