[316] See his “Notice” to Gil Blas, pp. xii, xiii.
[317] Hist. of Eng. Lit., vol. iv., p. 173.
[318] Op. cit., p. 240.
[319] Quoted by Bacon, Essays, “Apothegms,” 181.
[320] This is well illustrated by George Eliot, who observes rightly that wit is allied to ratiocination (Essays, “German Wit,” p. 81).
[321] I remember discussing the point with the late Henry Sidgwick—no mean authority—who admitted that several quotations which he had proffered as examples of wit might with equal appropriateness he described as humorous. The germ of the view put forward in the text is contained in some pithy remarks by the late Professor Minto (English Prose Literature, Introduction, p. 23).
[322] The reference in the text is to humour and wit, regarded as subjective, as elements in the writer. Considered objectively as an attribute of a character, wit of a kind may become one ingredient in a humorous presentation, as in the homely and rather borné wit of the countryfolk in the novels of George Eliot and Mr. Hardy.
[323] See Mr. Traill’s criticism, Sterne, p. 156 ff.
[324] Wit and Humour, p. 11.
[325] See Canon Ainger’s Introduction to The Essays of Elia, p. 8.