We do not know his prosaic
biography as we know Lewis Carroll's. We accept him as a purely fabulous
figure, on his own description of himself:
'His body is perfectly spherical,
He weareth a runcible hat.'
While Lewis Carroll's Wonderland is purely intellectual, Lear
introduces quite another element--the element of the poetical and even
emotional. Carroll works by the pure reason, but this is not so strong a
contrast; for, after all, mankind in the main has always regarded reason
as a bit of a joke. Lear introduces his unmeaning words and his
amorphous creatures not with the pomp of reason, but with the romantic
prelude of rich hues and haunting rhythms.
'Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live,'
is an entirely different type of poetry to that exhibited in
'Jabberwocky.' Carroll, with a sense of mathematical neatness, makes his
whole poem a mosaic of new and mysterious words. But Edward Lear, with
more subtle and placid effrontery, is always introducing scraps of his
own elvish dialect into the middle of simple and rational statements,
until we are almost stunned into admitting that we know what they mean.
There is a genial ring of commonsense about such lines as,
'For his aunt Jobiska said "Every one knows
That a Pobble is better without his toes,"'
which is beyond the reach of Carroll.
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