Page:Complete Works of Lewis Carroll.djvu/24

4 to their disconcerting scrutiny the extraordinary contrast between the cautious, prissy pace of the man and the mad, gay gait of the tale he told. They have not embarrassingly compared the Rev. Charles L. Dodgson with the immortal Lewis Carroll, two persons whom he himself never liked to see together.

One discrepancy between them has always been a subject of amused reflection—a discrepancy not unfamiliar to a generation which knows that one of its own most hilarious clowns is (in what is sometimes confusedly called real life) the professor of political economy at McGill University. It was the dual nature which, when Lewis Carroll was asked to contribute to a philosophical symposium, compelled the Mathematical Lecturer of Christ Church to reply coldly:

It was the discrepancy which once proved so embarrassing to him in his relations with his Queen. Victoria had been so good as to be delighted with Mr. Dodgson's photographs, for you may be sure that the then Prince of Wales, when he visited Oxford, did not get away without some samples of Mr. Dodgson's adroitness with a camera. Victoria even went so far as to say that Albert would have appreciated them highly. Then, when Alice was published and won her heart, she graciously suggested that Mr. Dodgson dedicate his next book to her. Unfortunately for Her Majesty, his next book was a mathematical opus entitled An Elementary Treatise on Determinants.

But the discrepancy which would more deeply interest