Question

Which sentence in this excerpt from Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" best exhibits the use of verbal irony? 1.Before, I had never experienced aught but a not unpleasing sadness.
2. Upon inspection, the drawer exhibited a great array of the shells of various sorts of nuts. 3.Indeed, to this quick-witted youth, the whole noble science of the law was contained in a nutshell.
4. So he sent him to my office, as student at law, errand boy, cleaner and sweeper, at the rate of one dollar a week.
For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me.

Answer 1

I think 4 because he was a student at law

Answer 2

Answer:

3. Indeed, to this quick-witted youth, the whole noble science of the law was contained in a nutshell.

Explanation:

Verbal irony is when someone says one thing but he meant just the opposite of that thing. It is a writer's way of being sarcastic about the situation in his own way.  Here too in "Bartleby, the Scrivener", the passage is talking of Gingernut, who is the office boy so named by the others as he is often sent to get ginger nut for them. It is ironic in the sense that for this errand boy, the law isn't much, just about full in a nutshell. To him, there isn't much to be done in the lawyer's office in contrast to the actual need to rewrite and copy the many paper works that needs to be actually done by the other workers, the scriveners.