Irony turns things into ridicule in a peculiar manner. It consists in laughing at a man under disguise, by appearing to praise or speak well of him. Swift affords us many illustrious examples of this species of ridicule. Take the following example. “By these methods, in a few weeks, there starts up many a writer, capable of managing the profoundest and most universal subjects. For what though his head be empty, provided his commonplace book be full? And if you will bate him but the circumstances of method, and style, and grammar, and invention; allow him but the common privileges of transcribing from others, and digressing from himself, as often as he shall see occasion; he will desire no more ingredients towards fitting up a treatise that shall make a very comely figure on a bookseller’s shelf, there to be preserved neat and clean, for a long eternity, adorned with the heraldry of its title, fairly inscribed on a label; never to be thumbed or greased by students, nor bound to everlasting chains of darkness in a library; but when the fullness of time is come, shall happily undergo the trial of purgatory, in order to ascend the sky[17].” The following passage from Arbuthnot is not less ironical. “If the Reverend clergy showed more concern than others, I charitably impute it to their great charge of souls; and what confirmed me in this opinion was, that the degrees of apprehension and terror could be distinguished to be greater or less, according to their ranks and degrees in the church[18].”
A parody must be distinguished from every species of ridicule. It enlivens a gay subject by imitating some important incident that is serious. It is ludicrous, and may be risible. But ridicule is not a necessary ingredient. Take the following examples, the first of which refers to an expression of Moses.
The skilful nymph reviews her force with care: Let spades be trumps! she said, and trumps they were. _Rape of the Lock_, _canto_ iii. 45.
The next is an imitation of Achilles’s oath in Homer.
But by this lock, this sacred lock, I swear, (Which never more shall join its parted hair, Which never more its honours shall renew, Clip’d from the lovely head where late it grew), That while my nostrils draw the vital air, This hand, which won it, shall for ever wear. He spoke, and speaking, in proud triumph spread The long contended honours of her head. _Ibid._ _canto_ iv. 133.