Tag: Fit5
On Borrowing
One of the surest tests [of a poet’s superiority or inferiority] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.
T. S. Eliot, p. 114 in The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, 1920
Likewise, a good illustrator welds the theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different and sometimes even funnier than that from which it is torn.
- Main image: John Martin’s painting The Bard (c. 1817).
- Inset: From a segment of an illustration (1876) by Henry Holiday to the chapter The Beaver’s Lesson in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark.
And Lewis Carroll may have borrowed from Thomas Gray.
All art is infested by other art.
(Leo Steinberg, in Art about Art, 1979)
2018-02-18, update: 2020-11-01
Mental Troubles
Perhaps I may venture for a moment to use a more serious tone, and to point out that there are mental troubles, much worse than mere worry, for which an absorbing object of thought may serve as a remedy.
- There are sceptical thoughts, which seem for the moment to uproot the firmest faith;
- there are blasphemous thoughts, which dart unbidden into the most reverent souls;
- there are unholy thoughts, which torture with their hateful presence the fancy that would fain be pure.
Against all these some real mental work is a most helpful ally. That “unclean spirit” of the parable, who brought back with him seven others more wicked than himself, only did so because he found the chamber “swept and garnished,” and its owner sitting with folded hands. Had he found it all alive with the “busy hum” of active work, there would have been scant welcome for him and his seven!
(Charles Lutwidge Dodgson: Pillow Problems and A Tangled Tale, 1885, p. XV;
see also: Life & Letters. Bulletpoints not by Dodgson.)
As any human, Carroll/Dodgson was battling with all kind of temptations. As we know, speculations about possible temptations in his private life keep feeding the pop culture Carroll debate since the 1930s. The controversy is marginalizing the religious conflicts which the Reverend Dodgson was struggling with. I think that one of these serious conflicts was Charles Darwin’s challenge to fundamental religious beliefs. Darwin’s discoveries surely had (and still have) the potential to uproot the firmest faith in various religions.
In the title of the book [Pillow-Problems, 2nd edition], the words “sleepless nights” have been replaced by “wakefull hours”.
This last change has been made in order to allay the anxiety of friends, who have written to me to express their sympathy in my broken-down state of health, believing that I am a sufferer of chronic “insomnia”, and that it is a remedy for that exhausting malady that I have recommended mathematical calculation.
The title was not, I fear, wisely chosen; and it certainly was liable to suggest a meaning I did not intend to convey, viz. that my “nights” are often wholly “sleepless”. This is by no means the case: I have never suffered from “insomnia”: and the over-wakeful hours, that I have had to spend at night, have often been simply the result of the over-sleepy hours I have spent during the preceding evening! Nor is it as a remedy for wakefulness that I have suggested mathematical calculation: but as a remedy for the harassing thoughts that are apt to invade a wholly-unoccupied mind.
I believe that an hour of calculation is much better for me than half-an-hour of worry.
(Charles Lutwidge Dodgson: Pillow Problems, preface to the second edition, 1893)
Carroll openly described how he used mental mathematical work to find distraction from “harassing thoughts”.
I don’t know to which degree the illustrator Henry Holiday discussed and aligned with Carroll his choice of pictorial references in his illustrations to Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark, but there is a pictorial reference to mental troubles: St. Anthony’s temptations (painting by Matthias Grünewald). In one of Holiday’s illustrations you see Colenso’s arithmetic textbook. Like Anthony, also Carroll needed lots of mental work as an distraction from sceptical, blasphemous and unholy thoughts. Anthony probably found help in the scriptures which were sacred to him. Interestingly, the Reverend Dodgson used mathematics to resist the temptations.
I saw this math textbook in Holiday’s illustration since many years. Only recently that led me to the assumption (which probably always will be just an assumption) that Holiday might have placed that book into his illustration as a hint to how Carroll used math to keep his brain busy with “some real mental work” as a “most helpful ally” in his battle against the temptations which haunted him.
By the way: Possible references in “The Hunting of the Snark” to St. Anthony and to Darwin had been addressed by Mahendra Singh already in June 2007, more than two years before I started my Snark hunt. He and John Tufail were among my most helpful scouts during my hunt.
2020-06-11, update: 2020-09-12
Benjamin Jowett
[…]
Need I rehearse the history of Jowett?
I need not, Senior Censor, for you know it.
That was the Board Hebdomadal, and oh!
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow!
[…]
C.L. Dodgson, from Notes by an Oxford chiel (1874)
For comparison (inspired by Dodgson?):
First come I. My name is J-W-TT.
There’s no knowledge but I know it.
I am Master of this College,
What I don’t know isn’t knowledge.
Source: The Balliol Rhymes (written in the 1880s), ed. W. G. Hiscock, 2nd edn. (1939; Oxford: printed for the editor, 1955): 1-25. PN 6110 C7H5 Robarts Library (Wikipedia: In 1880, seven undergraduates of Balliol published 40 quatrains of doggerel lampooning various members of the college under the title The Masque of B–ll––l, now better known as The Balliol Masque, in a format that came to be called the “Balliol rhyme“.The college authorities suppressed the publication fiercely.)
I suggest that The Barrister’s Dream in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark is about E.B. Pusey’s attempt to trial Jowett for heresy at the Vice-Chancellor’s Court for unpaid bills for heresy. According to Karen Gardiner (see p. 55 below), the trial began on 1863-03-20. The judge was an academic common lawyer. Jowett’s lawyer objected to the formally civilian court being turned into something like a court of common law, which had no jurisdiction in spiritual matters. The Punch (the anonymous author Dodgson?) called it the “small debts and heresies court“. The judge disagreed, provided it could be shown that Jowett had been guilty of breaking any of the university statues. As this could not be shown, the case was dismissed. Thus, the trial was a mess like the trial in the Barrister’s dream.
“In the matter of Treason the pig would appear
To have aided, but scarcely abetted:
While the charge of Insolvency fails, it is clear,
If you grant the plea ‘never indebted.’
See also:
※ John Tufail, The Jowett Controversy
※ Karen Gardiner, Escaping Justice in Wonderland (An adaption of a paper given at the Glasgow International Fantasy Conference 2018), published in The Carrollian No. 33 p. 47 ~ 60, March 2020 (abstract, 2018).
2-10-04-06, update: 2020-09-08
My Avatar

In this image you see where it came from.
Just in case you want to know the source for my previous avatar in 2017.
(My apologies for messing with William Blake.)
Holiday may have played with Blake’s painting too.
I don’t know. There are better options.
2017-08-28, update: 2020-07-20
Holiday’s Butcher and Millais’ Raleigh
But perhaps Holiday’s ruff – and the pose of the Fit Five drawing – was inspired by the Elizabethan drama inherent in Millais’ Boyhood of Raleigh, (1869).
Louise Schweitzer, One Wild Flower (2012)
A popular approach to avoid frustration and embarrassment is to claim that the meaning of the Snark is elusive. But some try to understand it nevertheless. For those courageous readers I take this post as an occasion to recommend Louise Schweitzer’s doctoral thesis One Wild Flower.
2017-09-04, updated 2020-07-16
jub jub jub jub jub jub jub jub jub …
Details are Important
The Tax Collector
Retweeted Again
I met the Snark in 2005
Before my Snark hunt started in 2008, I mainly focused on Henry Holiday’s illustration to the 5th fit in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark. Since 2005 (then as a member of a works council specialized on mental workload issues in OHS) I used that illustration as a depiction of improvable workplace design. I also inserted the illustration into a German Wikipedia article in 2008. Probably from there it was copied into another Wikipedia article in 2012. That one again inspired a Forbes article about well-being in the workplace in 2013.
In 2008 I read Carroll’s and Holiday’s complete tragicomedy. Then I made an incidental discovery.
Pigs and a Tuba
Help! I am seeing pigs!
In some of his illustrations to Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark, Henry Holiday alluded to The Image Breakers, a 16th century print made by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder. I see at least one of Holiday’s pigs in that print (spoiler) and also something which Henry Holiday could have turned into a Moritz bass tuba.
2019 is the year of the pig. Does that make me see pigs everywhere, or did Henry Holiday see that pig in Gheeraert’s print too?
Actually, I have to confess that I saw the pig already in 2009. But I didn’t mark it then:
Happy Chinese New Year
Wishing everyone a Happy Chinese New Year with this misericord of a pig playing the bagpipes in @riponcathedral! #YearOfThePig pic.twitter.com/cBqHUCWXoE
— National Churches Trust (@NatChurchTrust) February 5, 2019
More fun to be found with pigs in Lewis Carroll’s (whose dad was a resident canon at Ripon) “Hunting of the Snark” poem. Original book drawing included pigs playing musical instruments. A coincidence that they are fashioned similar to the Cathedral’s misericords? pic.twitter.com/oh7cqSuc5T
— Gail McMillan (@ww_gail) February 5, 2019
What was that? You wanted a pig sitting on a barrel playing a lyre while three of his companions dance to the music? OK, here you go… pic.twitter.com/Cey0RM08c2
— Ian Groves 🇪🇺 (@LandscapeIan) August 24, 2017
his hopeful relative joined a band in the early 13th century – what is his/her instrument of choice?
(Psalter – BL, Lansdowne MS 420, f. 12v)https://t.co/bNM4GOE0nK#PolonskyPre1200 pic.twitter.com/U4vecl8LY4— Tuija Ainonen (@AinonenT) February 5, 2019
Update 2019-06-11
— JulesGirlGuiding (@JulesRPardoe) June 11, 2019
Know your Bard
You find many renderings of John Martin‘s The Bard in the Internet. I think that in this comparison the left one is the right one and that the right one is not John Martin’s.
In Henry Holiday’s illustrations to Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark there are several references to John Martin’s original painting. Some are funny, some are spooky.
2018-10-24, update: 2019-02-09
9.5±0.5 Snark Hunters
There may be no tenth member in Henry Holiday’s illustrations to Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark. I think that the Snark hunting party consists of nine members only. Let us take them in order of their introduction:
- The Bellman, their captain.
- The Boots, a maker of Bonnets and Hoods
- The Barrister, brought to arrange their disputes, but repeatedly complained about the Beaver’s evil lace-making.
- The Broker, to value their goods.
- The Billiard-marker, whose skill was immense, might perhaps have won more than his share. From John Tufail I learned that in Henry Holiday’s illustration the Billiard-marker is preparing a cheat.
- The Banker, engaged at enormous expense, had the whole of their cash in his care.
- The Beaver, that paced on the deck or would sit making lace in the bow and had often (the Bellman said) saved them from wreck, though none of the sailors knew how.
- The Baker, also addressed by “Fry me!”, “Fritter my wig!”, “Candle-ends” as well as “Toasted-cheese”, and known for joking with hyenas and walking paw-in-paw with a bear.
- The Butcher, who only could kill Beavers, but later became best friend with the lace-making animal.
More about the cast:
※ 9 or 10 hunters?
※ Care and Hope
※ The Snark
2017-11-06, completely rewritten: 2018-11-07
Wild Figure
The Bard
- [main image]: John Martin, The Bard (ca. 1817); by GIMP: contrast enhanced in the rock area & light areas delated.
- [inset] Henry Holiday (engraver: Joseph Swain), Illustration (1876) to the chapter The Beaver’s Lesson in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark, detail
Bycatch (found in 2013) from my Snark hunt:
- [left] from Maurits Cornelis Escher’s Cimino Barbarano, 1929.
- [right] from John Martin’s The Bard, ca. 1817.
2017-09-26, update: 2018-05-26
Kitty
Comment to tweet by Jono Borden:
In his illustrations to Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark" (1876), Henry Holiday might have referred to a detail in this panel of the Isenheim Altarpiece. pic.twitter.com/Q0AruMIpps
— Goetz Kluge (@Bonnetmaker) December 26, 2017
Retweeted by Musée Unterlinden (2017-12-27):more
Another finding (bycatch from my Snark hunt):
Monsters
The Beaver’s Lesson

This is the illustration (partially inspired by various works of other artists) to the chapter The Beaver’s Lesson.
- Vector graphics in PDF for huge posters
(Computers and printers need lots of memory to process this file.) - 4400×6328 pixel graphics
- Henry Holiday’s nine illustrations and the Ocean Chart
- (x+7+10)*(1000-8)/992-17
- arthur.io (copy of my scan)
- Reddit | Facebook