Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/170

146

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
 * Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
 * He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
 * Did gyre and gimble in the wabc,

All mimsy were the borogroves,
 * And the mome raths outgrabe.

The story, as originally written, contained thirteen chapters, but the published book consisted of twelve only. The omitted chapter introduced a wasp, in the character of a judge or barrister, I suppose, since Mr. Tenniel wrote that "a wasp in a wig is altogether beyond the appliances of art." Apart from difficulties of illustration, the "wasp" chapter was not considered to be up to the level of the rest of the book, and this was probably the principal reason of its being left out.

"It is a curious fact," wrote Mr. Tenniel some years later, when replying to a request of Lewis Carroll's that he would illustrate another of his books, "that with 'Through the Looking-Glass' the faculty of making drawings for book illustration departed from me, and, notwithstanding all sorts of tempting inducements, I have done nothing in that direction since."