THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF LEWIS CARROLL 173
taking the Snark as a personification of popu- larity. Lewis Carroll always protested that the poem had no meaning at all.
As to the meaning of the Snark [he wrote to a friend in America], I'm very much afraid I didn't mean anything but nonsense ! Still, you know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them ; so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer means. So, whatever good meanings are in the book, I'm glad to accept as the meaning of the book. The best that I've seen is by a lady (she published it in a letter to a newspaper), that the whole book is an allegory on the search after happiness. I think this fits in beautifully in many ways — particularly about the bathing-machines : when the people get weary of life, and can't find happiness in towns or in books, then they rush off to the seaside, to see what bathing-machines will do for them.
Mr. H. Holiday, in a very interesting article on "The Snark's Significance" [Academy, January 29, 1898), quoted the inscription which Mr. Dodgson had written in a vellum-bound, pre- sentation-copy of the book. It is so charac- teristic that I take the liberty of reproducing it here : —
Presented to Henry Holiday, most patient of artists, by Charles L. Dodgson, most exacting, but not most ungrateful of authors, March 29, 1876.
A little girl, to whom Mr. Dodgson had given
