But George Eliot's sense of humour was different in quality rather than in degree from that which Lewes so abundantly possessed.

And it was a curious and interesting study to observe the manifestation of the quality in both of them.

It was not that the humour, which he felt and expressed, was less delicate in quality or less informed by deep human insight and the true _nihil-humanum-a-me-alienum-puto_ spirit than hers, but it was less wide and far-reaching in its purview of human feelings and passions and interests; more often individual in its applicability, and less drawn from the depths of human nature as exhibited by types and classes.

And often they would cap each other with a mutual relationship similar to that between a rule of syntax and its example, sometimes the one coming first and sometimes the other.
I remember that during the happy days of this visit I was writing a novel, afterwards published under the title of _A Siren_, and Lewes asked me to show him the manuscript, then nearly completed.

Of course I was only too glad to have the advantage of his criticism.