Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/167

 habitually, and he was in a terrible pickle about not having printed enough copies the other day.

Jabberwocky was at once recognised as the best and most original thing in the book, though one fair correspondent of The Queen declared that it was a translation from the German! The late Dean of Rochester, Dr. Scott, writes about it to Mr. Dodgson as follows:—

Are we to suppose, after all, that the Saga of Jabberwocky is one of the universal heirlooms which the Aryan race at its dispersion carried with it from the great cradle of the family? You must really consult Max Müller about this. It begins to be probable that the origo originalissima may be discovered in Sanscrit [sic], and that we shall by and by have a Iabrivokaveda. The hero will turn out to be the Sun-god in one of his Avatars; and the Tumtum tree the great Ash Ygdrasil of the Scandinavian mythology.

In March, 1872, the late Mr. A. A. Vansittart, of Trinity College, Cambridge, translated the poem into Latin elegiacs. His rendering was printed, for private circulation only, I believe, several years later, but will probably be new to most of my readers. A careful comparison with