“First came Dr. Andrew Bell. We knew him. Was he dull? Is a wooden spoon dull? Fishy were his eyes, torpedinous was his manner; and his main idea, out of two which he really had, related to the moon—from which you infer, perhaps, that he was lunatic. By no means. It was no craze, under the influence of the moon, which possessed him; it was an idea of mere hostility to the moon. . . . His wrath did not pass into lunacy; it produced simple distraction; and uneasy fumbling with the idea—like that of an old superannuated dog who longs to worry, but cannot for want of teeth.” A clever piece of analytical satire, if you like, but not humorous so much as witty. Incongruity, unexpectedness, belongs to the essence of humour. Here there is that cunning display of congruity between the old dog and the Doctor which the wit is so adroit in evolving. Similarly in the essay on “Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts,” the style of clever extravaganza adopted in certain passages is witty, certainly, but lacks the airy irresponsibility characterizing humour. Sometimes he indulges in pure clowning, which is humorous in a heavy-handed way. But grimacing humour is surely a poor kind of humour. Without going into any dismal academic discussion on Wit and Humour, I think it is quite possible to differentiate these two offsprings of imagination, making Wit the intellectual brother of the twain. Analytical minds naturally turn to wit, by preference: Impressionistic minds to humour. Dickens, who had no gift for analysis, and whose writings are a series of delightful unreflective, personal impressions, is always humorous, never witty. Reflective writers like George Eliot or George Meredith are more often witty than humorous. I do not rate De Quincey’s wit very highly, though it is agreeably diverting at times, but it was preferable to his humour. The second point to be noted against Dr. Japp is his reference to Coleridge. No one would claim Wordsworth as a humorist, but Coleridge cannot be dismissed with this comfortable finality. Perhaps he was more witty than humorous; he also had an analytic mind of rarer quality even than De Quincey’s, and his _Table Talk_ is full of delightful flashes. But the amusing account he gives of his early journalistic experiences and the pleasant way in which he pokes fun at himself, can scarcely be compatible with the assertion that he had “no humour.” Indeed, it was this quality, I think, which endeared him especially to Lamb, and it was the absence of this quality which prevented Lamb from giving that personal attachment to Wordsworth which he held for both Coleridge and Hazlitt.