Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/53

 discovery of the contrast between the thing said and the thing intended. And this pleasure is heightened when we observe the contrast between the fine soul who means nobly, and his speaking as if he meant to be ignoble. Then the ignoble thing is doubly condemned, first, by having been briefly mistaken to be the real opinion of the speaker, and then by the flash of recognition of the speaker's superiority. Thackeray describes the high-minded intentions of Rebecca Sharp: "It became naturally Rebecca's duty to make herself, as she said, agreeable to her benefactors, and to gain their confidence to the utmost of her power. Who can but admire this quality of gratitude in an unprotected orphan? 'I am alone in the world,' said the friendless girl: 'well, let us see if my wits cannot provide me with an honorable maintenance.' Thus it was that our little romantic friend formed visions of the future for herself ; nor must we be scandalized that, in all her castles in the air, a husband was the principal inhabitant. Of what else have young ladies to think but husbands? Of what else do dear mammas think? 'I must be my own mamma,' said Rebecca." Thus the great author confides to us his abhorrence of Vanity Fair.

In matters which are morally indifferent, irony is only a jesting which is disguised by gravity; as when we apparently agree with the notions of another person which are averse from our own, so that we puzzle him not only on the point of our own notion, but on the point of his own, and he begins to have a suspicion that he is not sound in the matter. This suspicion is derived