This charming insinuation of the great observer, who once said of himself that he had no head above his eyes, proves to us that he had a mighty truly-beating heart below them; and we reverently accept the little mother from his shaping hands, to place her in our Valhalla of Women, where Portia, Imogen, and Cordelia have long languished for her company.
If irony does not forget good nature in its indignation at discovered shams, it can impart the exhilaration of wit. In a late novel, entitled the "Maid of Sker," there is a fishmonger who says that, "when the eyes of a fish begin to fail him through long retirement from the water," he has means of setting up their aspect; "and I called" my patrons "generous gentlemen and Christian-minded ladies every time they wanted to smell my fish, which is not right before payment. What right has another man to disparage the property of another? When you have bought him, he is your own; but, when he is put in the scales, remember 'nothing but good of the dead,' if you remember any thing."
This recalls Hamlet's irony, when he said that he knew Polonius excellent well,—he was a fishmonger! "Not I, my lord." "Then I would you were so honest a man." Poor, stale Polonius! He was not as fresh as the fish which Shakspeare used to scent at Billingsgate, and knavery in the wind besides.
The cynicism of irony can be illustrated by the character of Jaques in "As You Like It," as the character of Apemantus in "Timon of Athens" will serve to show us a cynicism that has grown so ferocious as almost to beat irony from the field.
JAQUES.
There is not a spark of unkindly feeling in Puck when he says to Oberon, concerning the lovers,—
"Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
But when we overhear Jaques telling Orlando, "By my troth, I was seeking for a fool, when I found you," there is a tang of seedy beer in the speech. We suspect his common-sense of having soured: so that when he says to Orlando, "The worst fault you have is to be in love," we relish the estimate of Orlando's reply, "'Tis a fault I will not change for your best virtue."
The melancholy of Jaques is the cynicism of a man who is blasé with the convictions as well as the manners of society. He enjoys his vein too well to be melancholy in the modern sense of that word, for being something more than satirical he is something less than morose, and we feel that he is secretly pleased with his ability to be displeasing. Every vice lends a man a feeling of superiority in being different from other men: he broke through some bounds to acquire it, and this action contains some spice of originality and independence. He transgresses in a temper of pity for the less audacious and unchartered souls. So the cynic who makes his whole vicinity uncomfortable is pleasant company for himself because he has no mawkishness; you cannot cheat him with superfine emotions, he happens to have seen the world.