In its present status the term has two fairly distinct divisions, characterized by Bishop Thirwall, in his essay on the Irony of Sophocles, as the _verbal_ and the _practical_. The former is the rhetorical device whereby a certain idea or circumstance is implied by its statement in terms to the contrary or to the opposite effect. The latter is the contrast between the real and apparent state of things, or between the expected and the eventual, commonly described as the Irony of Fate. A third form, the kind known as dramatic irony, might be mentioned, though it is really a subdivision of cosmic irony.[165] For the actor makes his blunders and gets into his predicaments through ignorance; and this discrepancy between his notion of things and their actuality adds zest to the enjoyment of the spectator, who is in the secret. So the great unseen Spectator is conceived to observe the stage of the world, and derive the amusement of superior knowledge from that “Which, for the Pastime of Eternity, He doth himself contrive, enact, behold.” Among these varieties, and between all of them and the original meaning, there must be enough common ground to account for the persistence of the terminology through the centuries, allowing for the divergence natural to a slow and half conscious evolution. This common ground of denotation is of course dissimulation, whether in the restricted field of knowledge, or the complete reversal of statement and intention, or the specious show of things whereby we are deluded into an erroneous supposition or a false sense of security. But this simple matter of deception is enveloped in an atmosphere of connotation that is charged with complication and subtlety. The ironic habit of speech is a sign of a mind imaginative and averse to the obvious. Its indulgence indicates a love of concealment, from æsthetic motives, and a corresponding abhorrence of flat, naïve exposure. The ironist has taken the veil of covertness to protect himself from the garish overt day.[166] Its reception, on the other hand, is an equally sure indicator of disposition. For it is beloved of its own kin, deep answering unto deep, and distrusted by the alien with a repulsion as strong as that of the subtle for the simple. To understand or not to understand the ironic is an acid test of the literal mind. An apposite reference to this fact is found in a comment on one of our novelists.[167] “Some simple-minded people are revolted, even in literature, by the ironical method; and tell the humourist, with an air of moral disapproval, that they never know whether he is in jest or in earnest. To such matter-of-fact persons Mr. Disraeli’s novels must be a standing offense, for it is his most characteristic peculiarity that the passage from one phase to the other is imperceptible.”