Chapter V: (1877-1883)

Dramatic tastes--Miss Ellen Terry--"Natural Science at
Oxford"--Mr. Dodgson as an artist--Miss E. G. Thomson--The
drawing of children--A curious dream--"The Deserted
Parks"--"Syzygies"--Circus children--Row-loving
undergraduates--A letter to _The Observer_--Resignation
of the Lectureship--He is elected Curator of the Common
Room--Dream-music.

Mr. Dodgson's love of the drama was not, as I have shown, a taste which he acquired in later years. From early college days he never missed anything which he considered worth seeing at the London theatres. I believe he used to reproach himself--unfairly, I think--with spending too much time on such recreations. For a man who worked so hard and so incessantly as he did; for a man to whom vacations meant rather a variation of mental employment than absolute rest of mind, the drama afforded just the sort of relief that was wanted. His vivid imagination, the very earnestness and intensity of his character enabled him to throw himself utterly into the spirit of what he saw upon the stage, and to forget in it all the petty worries and disappointments of life. The old adage says that a man cannot burn the candle at both ends; like most proverbs, it is only partially true, for often the hardest worker is the man who enters with most zest into his recreations, and this was emphatically the case with Mr. Dodgson.

Walter Pater, in his book on the Renaissance, says (I quote from rough notes only), "A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life." Here we have the truer philosophy, here we have the secret of Lewis Carroll's life. He never wasted time on social formalities; he refused to fulfil any of those (so called) duties which involve ineffable boredom, and so his mind was always fresh and ready. He said in one of his letters that he hoped that in the next world all knowledge would not be given to us suddenly, but that we should gradually grow wiser, for the _acquiring_ knowledge was to him the real pleasure. What is this but a paraphrase of another of Pater's thoughts, "Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself is the end."

And so, times without number, he allowed himself to be carried away by emotion as he saw life in the mirror of the stage; but, best of all, he loved to see the acting of children, and he generally gave copies of his books to any of the little performers who specially pleased him. On January 13, 1877, he wrote in his Diary:--

Went up to town for the day, and took E-- with me to the
afternoon pantomime at the Adelphi, "Goody Two-Shoes," acted
entirely by children. It was a really charming performance.
Little Bertie Coote, aged ten, was clown--a wonderfully
clever little fellow; and Carrie Coote, about eight, was
Columbine, a very pretty graceful little thing. In a few
years' time she will be just _the_ child to act
"Alice," if it is ever dramatised. The harlequin was a
little girl named Gilchrist, one of the most beautiful
children, in face and figure, that I have ever seen. I must
get an opportunity of photographing her. Little Bertie
Coote, singing "Hot Codlings," was curiously like the
pictures of Grimaldi.

It need hardly be said that the little girl was Miss Constance Gilchrist. Mr. Dodgson sent her a copy of "Alice in Wonderland," with a set of verses on her name.

Many people object altogether to children appearing on the stage; it is said to be bad for their morals as well as for their health. A letter which Mr. Dodgson once wrote in the _St. James's Gazette_ contains a sufficient refutation of the latter fancy:--

I spent yesterday afternoon at Brighton, where for five
hours I enjoyed the society of three exceedingly happy and
healthy little girls, aged twelve, ten, and seven. I think
that any one who could have seen the vigour of life in those
three children--the intensity with which they enjoyed
everything, great or small, that came in their way--who
could have watched the younger two running races on the
Pier, or have heard the fervent exclamation of the eldest at
the end of the afternoon, "We _have_ enjoyed
ourselves!" would have agreed with me that here, at least,
there was no excessive "physical strain," nor any
_imminent_ danger of "fatal results"! A drama, written
by Mr. Savile Clarke, is now being played at Brighton, and
in this (it is called "Alice in Wonderland") all three
children have been engaged. They had been acting every night
this week, and _twice_ on the day before I met them,
the second performance lasting till half-past ten at night,
after which they got up at seven next morning to bathe! That
such (apparently) severe work should co-exist with blooming
health and buoyant spirits seems at first sight a paradox;
but I appeal to any one who has ever worked _con amore_
at any subject whatever to support me in the assertion that,
when you really love the subject you are working at, the
"physical strain" is absolutely _nil_; it is only when
working "against the grain" that any strain is felt, and I
believe the apparent paradox is to be explained by the fact
that a taste for _acting_ is one of the strongest
passions of human nature, that stage-children show it nearly
from infancy, and that, instead of being miserable drudges
who ought to be celebrated in a new "Cry of the Children,"
they simply _rejoice_ in their work "even as a giant
rejoiceth to run his course."

Mr. Dodgson's general views on the mission of the drama are well shown by an extract from a circular which he sent to many of his friends in 1882:--

The stage (as every playgoer can testify) is an engine of
incalculable power for influencing society; and every effort
to purify and ennoble its aims seems to me to deserve all
the countenance that the great, and all the material help
that the wealthy, can give it; while even those who are
neither great nor wealthy may yet do their part, and help
to--
"Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be."

I do not know if Mr. Dodgson's suggested amendment of some lines in the "Merchant of Venice" was ever carried out, but it further illustrates the serious view he took of this subject. The hint occurs in a letter to Miss Ellen Terry, which runs as follows:--

You gave me a treat on Saturday such as I have very seldom
had in my life. You must be weary by this time of hearing
your own praises, so I will only say that Portia was all I
could have imagined, and more. And Shylock is
superb--especially in the trial-scene.

Now I am going to be very bold, and make a suggestion, which
I do hope you will think well enough of to lay it before Mr.
Irving. I want to see that clause omitted (in the sentence
on Shylock)--

That, for this favour,
He presently become a Christian;

It is a sentiment that is entirely horrible and revolting to
the feelings of all who believe in the Gospel of Love. Why
should our ears be shocked by such words merely because they
are Shakespeare's? In his day, when it was held to be a
Christian's duty to force his belief on others by fire and
sword--to burn man's body in order to save his soul--the
words probably conveyed no shock. To all Christians now
(except perhaps extreme Calvinists) the idea of forcing a
man to abjure his religion, whatever that religion may be,
is (as I have said) simply horrible.

I have spoken of it as a needless outrage on religious
feeling: but surely, being so, it is a great artistic
mistake. Its tendency is directly contrary to the spirit of
the scene. We have despised Shylock for his avarice, and we
rejoice to see him lose his wealth: we have abhorred him for
his bloodthirsty cruelty, and we rejoice to see him baffled.
And now, in the very fulness of our joy at the triumph of
right over wrong, we are suddenly called on to see in him
the victim of a cruelty a thousand times worse than his own,
and to honour him as a martyr. This, I am sure, Shakespeare
never meant. Two touches only of sympathy does he allow us,
that we may realise him as a man, and not as a demon
incarnate. "I will not pray with you"; "I had it of Leah,
when I was a bachelor." But I am sure he never meant our
sympathies to be roused in the supreme moment of his
downfall, and, if he were alive now, I believe he would cut
out those lines about becoming a Christian.

No interpolation is needed--(I should not like to suggest
the putting in a single word that is not Shakespeare's)--I
would read the speech thus:--

That lately stole his daughter:
Provided that he do record a gift,
Here in the court, &c.

And I would omit Gratiano's three lines at Shylock's exit,
and let the text stand:--

_Duke_: "Get thee gone, but do it." (_Exit
Shylock_.)

The exit, in solemn silence, would be, if possible, even
grander than it now is, and would lose nothing by the
omission of Gratiano's flippant jest....

On January 16th he saw "New Men and Old Acres" at the Court Theatre. The two authors of the pieces, Dubourg and Tom Taylor, were great friends of his. "It was a real treat," he writes, "being well acted in every detail. Ellen Terry was wonderful, and I should think unsurpassable in all but the lighter parts." Mr. Dodgson himself had a strong wish to become a dramatic author, but, after one or two unsuccessful attempts to get his plays produced, he wisely gave up the idea, realising that he had not the necessary constructive powers. The above reference to Miss Ellen Terry's acting is only one out of a countless number; the great actress and he were excellent friends, and she did him many a kindness in helping on young friends of his who had taken up the stage as a profession.

She and her sister, Miss Kate Terry, were among the distinguished people whom he photographed. The first time he saw the latter actress was, I think, in 1858, when she was playing in "The Tempest" at the Princess's. "The gem of the piece," he writes, "was the exquisitely graceful and beautiful Ariel, Miss Kate Terry. Her appearance as a sea-nymph was one of the most beautiful living pictures I ever saw, but this, and every other one in my recollection (except Queen Katherine's dream), were all outdone by the concluding scene, where Ariel is left alone, hovering over the wide ocean, watching the retreating ship. It is an innovation on Shakespeare, but a worthy one, and the conception of a true poet."

Mr. Dodgson was a frequent contributor to the daily Press. As a rule his letters appeared in the _St. James's Gazette_, for the editor, Mr. Greenwood, was a friend of his, but the following sarcastic epistle was an exception:--

NATURAL SCIENCE AT OXFORD.

_To the Editor of the "Pall Mall Gazette."_

Sir,--There is no one of the many ingenious appliances of
mechanical science that is more appreciated or more
successfully employed than the wedge; so subtle and
imperceptible are the forces needed for the insertion of its
"thin end," so astounding the results which its "thick end"
may ultimately produce. Of the former process we shall see a
beautiful illustration in a Congregation to be holden at
Oxford on the 24th inst., when it will be proposed to grant,
to those who have taken the degrees of bachelor and master
in Natural Science only, the same voting powers as in the
case of the "M.A." degree. This means the omission of one of
the two classical languages, Latin and Greek, from what has
been hitherto understood as the curriculum of an Oxford
education. It is to this "thin end" of the wedge that I
would call the attention of our non-residents, and of all
interested in Oxford education, while the "thick end" is
still looming in the distance. But why fear a "thick end" at
all? I shall be asked. Has Natural Science shown any such
tendency, or given any reason to fear that such a concession
would lead to further demands? In answer to that question,
let me sketch, in dramatic fashion, the history of her
recent career in Oxford. In the dark ages of our University
(some five-and-twenty years ago), while we still believed in
classics and mathematics as constituting a liberal
education, Natural Science sat weeping at our gates. "Ah,
let me in!" she moaned; "why cram reluctant youth with your
unsatisfying lore? Are they not hungering for bones; yea,
panting for sulphuretted hydrogen?" We heard and we pitied.
We let her in and housed her royally; we adorned her palace
with re-agents and retorts, and made it a very charnel-house
of bones, and we cried to our undergraduates, "The feast of
Science is spread! Eat, drink, and be happy!" But they would
not. They fingered the bones, and thought them dry. They
sniffed at the hydrogen, and turned away. Yet for all that
Science ceased not to cry, "More gold, more gold!" And her
three fair daughters, Chemistry, Biology, and Physics (for
the modern horse-leech is more prolific than in the days of
Solomon), ceased not to plead, "Give, give!" And we gave; we
poured forth our wealth like water (I beg her pardon, like
H{_2}O), and we could not help thinking there was something
weird and uncanny in the ghoul-like facility with which she
absorbed it.

The curtain rises on the second act of the drama. Science is
still weeping, but this time it is for lack of pupils, not
of teachers or machinery. "We are unfairly handicapped!" she
cries. "You have prizes and scholarships for classics and
mathematics, and you bribe your best students to desert us.
Buy us some bright, clever boys to teach, and then see what
we can do!" Once more we heard and pitied. We had bought her
bones; we bought her boys. And now at last her halls were
filled--not only with teachers paid to teach, but also with
learners paid to learn. And we have not much to complain of
in results, except that perhaps she is a little too ready to
return on our hands all but the "honour-men"--all, in fact,
who really need the helping hand of an educator. "Here, take
back your stupid ones!" she cries. "Except as subjects for
the scalpel (and we have not yet got the Human Vivisection
Act through Parliament) we can do nothing with them!"

The third act of the drama is yet under rehearsal; the
actors are still running in and out of the green-room, and
hastily shuffling on their new and ill-fitting dresses; but
its general scope is not far to seek. At no distant day our
once timid and tearful guest will be turning up her nose at
the fare provided for her. "Give me no more youths to
teach," she will say; "but pay me handsomely, and let me
think. Plato and Aristotle were all very well in their way;
Diogenes and his tub for me!" The allusion is not
inappropriate. There can be little doubt that some of the
researches conducted by that retiring philosopher in the
recesses of that humble edifice were strictly scientific,
embracing several distinct branches of entomology. I do not
mean, of course, that "research" is a new idea in Oxford.
From time immemorial we have had our own chosen band of
researchers (here called "professors"), who have advanced
the boundaries of human knowledge in many directions. True,
they are not left so wholly to themselves as some of these
modern thinkers would wish to be, but are expected to give
some few lectures, as the outcome of their "research" and
the evidence of its reality, but even that condition has not
always been enforced--for instance, in the case of the late
Professor of Greek, Dr. Gaisford, the University was too
conscious of the really valuable work he was doing in
philological research to complain that he ignored the usual
duties of the chair and delivered no lectures.

And, now, what is the "thick end" of the wedge? It is that
Latin and Greek may _both_ vanish from our curriculum;
that logic, philosophy, and history may follow; and that the
destinies of Oxford may some day be in the hands of those
who have had no education other than "scientific." And why
not? I shall be asked. Is it not as high a form of education
as any other? That is a matter to be settled by facts. I can
but offer my own little item of evidence, and leave it to
others to confirm or to refute. It used once to be thought
indispensable for an educated man that he should be able to
write his own language correctly, if not elegantly; it seems
doubtful how much longer this will be taken as a criterion.
Not so many years ago I had the honour of assisting in
correcting for the press some pages of the
_Anthropological Review_, or some such periodical. I
doubt not that the writers were eminent men in their own
line; that each could triumphantly prove, to his own
satisfaction, the unsoundness of what the others had
advanced; and that all would unite in declaring that the
theories of a year ago were entirely exploded by the latest
German treatise; but they were not able to set forth these
thoughts, however consoling in themselves, in anything
resembling the language of educated society. In all my
experience, I have never read, even in the "local news" of
a country paper, such slipshod, such deplorable English.

I shall be told that I am ungenerous in thus picking out a
few unfavourable cases, and that some of the greatest minds
of the day are to be found in the ranks of science. I freely
admit that such may be found, but my contention is that
_they_ made the science, not the science them; and that
in any line of thought they would have been equally
distinguished. As a general principle, I do not think that
the exclusive study of any _one_ subject is really
education; and my experience as a teacher has shown me that
even a considerable proficiency in Natural Science, taken
alone, is so far from proving a high degree of cultivation
and great natural ability that it is fully compatible with
general ignorance and an intellect quite below par.
Therefore it is that I seek to rouse an interest, beyond the
limits of Oxford, in preserving classics as an essential
feature of a University education. Nor is it as a classical
tutor (who might be suspected of a bias in favour of his own
subject) that I write this. On the contrary, it is as one
who has taught science here for more than twenty years (for
mathematics, though good-humouredly scorned by the
biologists on account of the abnormal certainty of its
conclusions, is still reckoned among the sciences) that I
beg to sign myself,--Your obedient servant,

Charles L. Dodgson,

_Mathematical Lecturer of Christ Church, Oxford.

May 17th._

I give the above letter because I think it amusing; it must not be supposed that the writer's views on the subject remained the same all through his life. He was a thorough Conservative, and it took a long time to reconcile him to any new departure. In a political discussion with a friend he once said that he was "first an Englishman, and then a Conservative," but however much a man may try to put patriotism before party, the result will be but partially successful, if patriotism would lead him into opposition to the mental bias which has originally made him either a Conservative or a Radical.

He took, of course, great pleasure in the success of his books, as every author must; but the greatest pleasure of all to him was to know that they had pleased others. Notes like the following are frequent in his Diary: "_June_ 25_th_.--Spent the afternoon in sending off seventy circulars to Hospitals, offering copies of 'Alice' and the 'Looking-Glass' for sick children." He well deserved the name which one of his admirers gave him--"The man who loved little children."

In April, 1878, he saw a performance of "Olivia" at the Court Theatre. "The gem of the piece is Olivia herself, acted by Ellen Terry with a sweetness and pathos that moved some of the audience (nearly including myself) to tears. Her leave-taking was exquisite; and when, in her exile, she hears that her little brother had cried at the mention of her name, her exclamation 'Pet!' was tenderness itself. Altogether, I have not had a greater dramatic treat for a long time. _Dies cretâ notandus_."

I see that I have marked for quotation the following brief entries in the Diary:--

_Aug. 4th_ (at Eastbourne).--Went, morning and
evening, to the new chapel-of-ease belonging to S.
Saviour's. It has the immense advantage of _not_ being
crowded; but this scarcely compensates for the vile
Gregorian chants, which vex and weary one's ear.

_Aug. 17th_.--A very inquisitive person, who had some
children with her, found out my name, and then asked me to
shake hands with her child, as an admirer of my books: this
I did, unwisely perhaps, as I have no intention of
continuing the acquaintance of a "Mrs. Leo Hunter."

_Dec. 23rd_.--I have been making a plan for work next
term, of this kind: Choose a subject (_e.g._,
"Circulation," "Journeys of S. Paul," "English Counties")
for each week. On Monday write what I know about it; during
week get up subject; on Saturday write again; put the two
papers away, and six months afterwards write again and
compare.

As an artist, Mr. Dodgson possessed an intense natural appreciation of the beautiful, an abhorrence of all that is coarse and unseemly which might almost be called hyper-refinement, a wonderfully good eye for form, and last, but not least, the most scrupulous conscientiousness about detail. On the other hand his sense of colour was somewhat imperfect, and his hand was almost totally untrained, so that while he had all the enthusiasm of the true artist, his work always had the defects of an amateur.

In 1878 some drawings of Miss E. Gertrude Thomson's excited his keen admiration, and he exerted himself to make her acquaintance. Their first meeting is described so well by Miss Thomson herself in _The Gentlewoman_ for January 29, 1898, that I cannot do better than quote the description of the scene as given there:--

It was at the end of December, 1878, that a letter, written
in a singularly legible and rather boyish-looking hand, came
to me from Christ Church, Oxford, signed "C. L. Dodgson."
The writer said that he had come across some fairy designs
of mine, and he should like to see some more of my work. By
the same post came a letter from my London publisher (who
had supplied my address) telling me that the "Rev. C. L.
Dodgson" was "Lewis Carroll."

"Alice in Wonderland" had long been one of my pet books, and
as one regards a favourite author as almost a personal
friend, I felt less restraint than one usually feels in
writing to a stranger, though I carefully concealed my
knowledge of his identity, as he had not chosen to reveal
it.

This was the beginning of a frequent and delightful
correspondence, and as I confessed to a great love for fairy
lore of every description, he asked me if I would accept a
child's fairy-tale book he had written, called "Alice in
Wonderland." I replied that I knew it nearly all off by
heart, but that I should greatly prize a copy given to me by
himself. By return came "Alice," and "Through the
Looking-Glass," bound most luxuriously in white calf and
gold.

And this is the graceful and kindly note that came with
them: "I am now sending you 'Alice,' and the 'Looking-Glass'
as well. There is an incompleteness about giving only one,
and besides, the one you bought was probably in red and
would not match these. If you are at all in doubt as to what
to do with the (now) superfluous copy, let me suggest your
giving it to some poor sick child. I have been distributing
copies to all the hospitals and convalescent homes I can
hear of, where there are sick children capable of reading
them, and though, of course, one takes some pleasure in the
popularity of the books elsewhere, it is not nearly so
pleasant a thought to me as that they may be a comfort and
relief to children in hours of pain and weariness. Still, no
recipient _can_ be more appropriate than one who seems
to have been in fairyland herself, and to have seen, like
the 'weary mariners' of old--

'Between the green brink and the running foam
White limbs unrobed in a crystal air,
Sweet faces, rounded arms, and bosoms prest
To little harps of gold.'"

"Do you ever come to London?" he asked in another letter;
"if so, will you allow me to call upon you?"

Early in the summer I came up to study, and I sent him word
that I was in town. One night, coming into my room, after a
long day spent at the British Museum, in the half-light I
saw a card lying on the table. "Rev. C. L. Dodgson." Bitter,
indeed, was my disappointment at having missed him, but just
as I was laying it sadly down I spied a small T.O. in the
corner. On the back I read that he couldn't get up to my
rooms early or late enough to find me, so would I arrange to
meet him at some museum or gallery the day but one
following? I fixed on South Kensington Museum, by the
"Schliemann" collection, at twelve o'clock.

A little before twelve I was at the rendezvous, and then the
humour of the situation suddenly struck me, that _I_
had not the ghost of an idea what _he_ was like, nor
would _he_ have any better chance of discovering
_me!_ The room was fairly full of all sorts and
conditions, as usual, and I glanced at each masculine figure
in turn, only to reject it as a possibility of the one I
sought. Just as the big clock had clanged out twelve, I
heard the high vivacious voices and laughter of children
sounding down the corridor.

At that moment a gentleman entered, two little girls
clinging to his hands, and as I caught sight of the tall
slim figure, with the clean-shaven, delicate, refined face,
I said to myself, "_That's_ Lewis Carroll." He stood
for a moment, head erect, glancing swiftly over the room,
then, bending down, whispered something to one of the
children; she, after a moment's pause, pointed straight at
me.

Dropping their hands he came forward, and with that winning
smile of his that utterly banished the oppressive sense of
the Oxford don, said simply, "I am Mr. Dodgson; I was to
meet you, I think?" To which I as frankly smiled, and said,
"How did you know me so soon?"

"My little friend found you. I told her I had come to meet a
young lady who knew fairies, and she fixed on you at once.
But _I_ knew you before she spoke."

This acquaintance ripened into a true, artistic friendship, which lasted till Mr. Dodgson's death. In his first letter to Miss Thomson he speaks of himself as one who for twenty years had found his one amusement in photographing from life--especially photographing children; he also said that he had made attempts ("most unsuccessfully") at drawing them. When he got to know her more intimately, he asked her to criticise his work, and when she wrote expressing her willingness to do so, he sent her a pile of sketch-books, through which she went most carefully, marking the mistakes, and criticising, wherever criticism seemed to be necessary.

After this he might often have been seen in her studio, lying flat on his face, and drawing some child-model who had been engaged for his especial benefit. "I _love_ the effort to draw," he wrote in one of his letters to her, "but I utterly fail to please even my own eye--tho' now and then I seem to get somewhere _near_ a right line or two, when I have a live child to draw from. But I have no time left now for such things. In the next life, I do _hope_ we shall not only _see_ lovely forms, such as this world does not contain, but also be able to _draw_ them."

But while he fully recognised the limits of his powers, he had great faith in his own critical judgment; and with good reason, for his perception of the beautiful in contour and attitude and grouping was almost unerring. All the drawings which Miss Thomson made for his "Three Sunsets" were submitted to his criticism, which descended to the smallest details. He concludes a letter to her, which contained the most elaborate and minute suggestions for the improvement of one of these pictures, with the following words: "I make all these suggestions with diffidence, feeling that I have _really no_ right at all, as an amateur, to criticise the work of a real artist."

The following extract from another letter to Miss Thomson shows that seeking after perfection, that discontent with everything short of the best, which was so marked a feature of his character. She had sent him two drawings of the head of some child-friend of his:--

Your note is a puzzle--you say that "No. 2 would have been
still more like if the paper had been exactly the same
shade--but I'd no more at hand of the darker colour." Had I
given you the impression that I was in a _hurry_, and
was willing to have No. 2 _less_ good than it
_might_ be made, so long as I could have it
_quick?_ If I did, I'm very sorry: I never _meant_
to say a word like it: and, if you had written "I could make
it still more like, on darker paper; but I've no more at
hand. How long can you wait for me to get some?" I should
have replied, "Six weeks, or six _months_, if you
prefer it!"

I have already spoken of his love of nature, as opposed to the admiration for the morbid and abnormal. "I want you," he writes to Miss Thomson, "to do my fairy drawings from _life_. They would be very pretty, no doubt, done out of your own head, but they will be ten times as valuable if done from life. Mr. Furniss drew the pictures of 'Sylvie' from life. Mr. Tenniel is the only artist, who has drawn for me, who resolutely refused to use a model, and declared he no more needed one than I should need a multiplication-table to work a mathematical problem!" On another occasion he urges the importance of using models, in order to avoid the similarity of features which would otherwise spoil the pictures: "Cruikshank's splendid illustrations were terribly spoiled by his having only _one_ pretty female face in them all. Leech settled down into _two_ female faces. Du Maurier, I think, has only _one_, now. All the ladies, and all the little girls in his pictures look like twin sisters."

It is interesting to know that Sir Noel Paton and Mr. Walter Crane were, in Lewis Carroll's opinion, the most successful drawers of children: "There are but few artists who seem to draw the forms of children _con amore_. Walter Crane is perhaps the best (always excepting Sir Noel Paton): but the thick outlines, which he insists on using, seem to take off a good deal from the beauty of the result."

He held that no artist can hope to effect a higher type of beauty than that which life itself exhibits, as the following words show:--

I don't quite understand about fairies losing "grace," if
too like human children. Of course I grant that to be like
some _actual_ child is to lose grace, because no living
child is perfect in form: many causes have lowered the race
from what God made it. But the _perfect_ human form,
free from these faults, is surely equally applicable to men,
and fairies, and angels? Perhaps that is what you mean--that
the Artist can imagine, and design, more perfect forms than
we ever find in life?

I have already referred several times to Miss Ellen Terry as having been one of Mr. Dodgson's friends, but he was intimate with the whole family, and used often to pay them a visit when he was in town. On May 15, 1879, he records a very curious dream which he had about Miss Marion ("Polly") Terry:--

Last night I had a dream which I record as a curiosity, so
far as I know, in the literature of dreams. I was staying,
with my sisters, in some suburb of London, and had heard
that the Terrys were staying near us, so went to call, and
found Mrs. Terry at home, who told us that Marion and
Florence were at the theatre, "the Walter House," where they
had a good engagement. "In that case," I said, "I'll go on
there at once, and see the performance--and may I take Polly
with me?" "Certainly," said Mrs. Terry. And there was Polly,
the child, seated in the room, and looking about nine or ten
years old: and I was distinctly conscious of the fact, yet
without any feeling of surprise at its incongruity, that I
was going to take the _child_ Polly with me to the
theatre, to see the _grown-up_ Polly act! Both
pictures--Polly as a child, and Polly as a woman, are, I
suppose, equally clear in my ordinary waking memory: and it
seems that in sleep I had contrived to give the two pictures
separate individualities.

Of all the mathematical books which Mr. Dodgson wrote, by far the most elaborate, if not the most original, was "Euclid and His Modern Rivals." The first edition was issued in 1879, and a supplement, afterwards incorporated into the second edition, appeared in 1885.

This book, as the author says, has for its object

to furnish evidence (1) that it is essential for the
purposes of teaching or examining in Elementary Geometry to
employ one text-book only; (2) that there are strong _a
priori_ reasons for retaining in all its main features,
and especially in its sequence and numbering of
Propositions, and in its treatment of Parallels, the Manual
of Euclid; and (3) that no sufficient reasons have yet been
shown for abandoning it in favour of any one of the modern
Manuals which have been offered as substitutes.

The book is written in dramatic form, and relieved throughout by many touches in the author's happiest vein, which make it delightful not only to the scientific reader, but also to any one of average intelligence with the slightest sense of humour.

Whether the conclusions are accepted in their entirety or not, it is certain that the arguments are far more effective than if the writer had presented them in the form of an essay. Mr. Dodgson had a wide experience as a teacher and examiner, so that he knew well what he was writing about, and undoubtedly the appearance of this book has done very much to stay the hand of the innovator.

The scene opens in a College study--time, midnight. Minos, an examiner, is discovered seated between two immense piles of manuscripts. He is driven almost to distraction in his efforts to mark fairly the papers sent up, by reason of the confusion caused through the candidates offering various substitutes for Euclid. Rhadamanthus, another equally distracted examiner, comes to his room.

The two men consult together for a time, and then Rhadamanthus retires, and Minos falls asleep. Hereupon the Ghost of Euclid appears, and discusses with Minos the reasons for retaining his Manual as a whole, in its present order and arrangement. As they are mainly concerned with the wants of beginners, their attention is confined to Books I. and II.

We must be content with one short extract from the dialogue:--

_Euclid_.--It is, I think, a friend of yours who has
amused himself by tabulating the various Theorems which
might be enunciated on the single subject of Pairs of Lines.
How many did he make them out to be?

_Minos_.--About two hundred and fifty, I believe.

_Euclid_.--At that rate there would probably be within
the limit of my First Book--how many?

_Minos_.--A thousand at least.

_Euclid_.--What a popular school-book it will be! How
boys will bless the name of the writer who first brings out
the complete thousand!

With a view to discussing and criticising his various modern rivals, Euclid promises to send to Minos the ghost of a German Professor (Herr Niemand) who "has read all books, and is ready to defend any thesis, true or untrue."

"A charming companion!" as Minos drily remarks.

This brings us to Act II., in which the Manuals which reject Euclid's treatment of Parallels are dealt with one by one. Those Manuals which adopt it are reserved for Act III., Scene i.; while in Scene ii., "The Syllabus of the Association for the Improvement of Geometrical Teaching," and Wilson's "Syllabus," come under review.

Only one or two extracts need be given, which, it is hoped, will suffice to illustrate the character and style of the book: