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Rh the wrong side upwards—a sight to send the ordinary spectator into fits of laughter. But the genuine humourist sees something in that feature itself, as nature shaped it, to excite his facetiousness. In 'A Minor Prophet' some lines occur in which a somewhat similar view of the genuine source of humour is pithily put:

Again, in her essay on 'Heinrich Heine,' George Eliot thus defines the difference between humour and wit: "Humour is of earlier growth than wit, and it is in accordance with this earlier growth that it has more affinity with the poetic tendencies, while wit is more nearly allied to the ratiocinative intellect. Humour draws its materials from situations and characteristics; wit seizes on unexpected and complex relations. It is only the ingenuity, condensation, and instantaneousness which lift some witticisms from reasoning