ing often concerned
with deformity. It appeals to the senses rather than to the emotions.
The complication in it is never very good when it is confined to
pictorial representation, as we may observe that without some
explanation we should seldom know what a design was intended to portray;
and when the word means description in writing it still retains some of
its original reference to sight, and is concerned principally with form
and optical similitudes.

Although Wit and Humour are often used as synonymous, the fact of two
words being in use, and the attempts which have been made to
discriminate between them, prove that there must be a distinction in
signification.[25] It is so fine that many able writers have failed to
detect it. Lord Macaulay considered wit to refer to contrasts sought
for, humour to those before our eyes--but such an explanation is not
altogether satisfactory. Humour originally meant moisture, or any limpid
subtle fluid, and so came to signify the disposition or turn of the
mind--just as spirit, originally breath or wind, came to signify the
soul of man. In Ben Jonson's time it had this signification, as in one
of his plays entitled "Every Man in his Humour." Dispositions being very
different, it came to signify fancy--as where Burton, author of the
"Anatomy of Melancholy," is called humorous--and also the whimsical Sir
W. Thornhill in the "Vicar of Wakefield"--and finally meant the feeling
which appreciates the ludicrous, though we sometimes use the old sense
in speaking of a good-humoured man.

Wit is a Saxon word, and originally signified Wisdom--a witte was a wise
man, and the Saxon Parliament was called the Wittenagemot. We may
suppose that wisdom did not then so much imply learning as natural
sagacity, and came to refer to such ingenious attempts as those in the
Exeter Book. Here would be a basis for the later meaning, especially if
some of the old saws came to be regarded as ludicrous, but for a long
time afterwards wit signified talent, whether humorous or otherwise, and
as late as Elizabeth the "wits" were often used as synonymous with
judgment. Steele, introducing Pope's "Messiah" in the Spectator, says
that it is written by a friend of his "who is not ashamed to employ his
wit in the praise of of his Maker." Addison introduced the word genius,
and the other was relegated to humorous conceits--a change no doubt
facilitated by the short and monosyllabic form and sound. The word
_facetus_