sayings are often based on profound knowledge or deep thought. Like
Lear, he never spoiled his quaint fancies by over-exaggerating their
quaintness or their fancifulness, and his ridiculous plots are as
carefully conceived, constructed, and elaborated as though they
embodied the soundest facts. No funny detail is ever allowed to
become _too_ funny; and it is in this judicious economy of
extravagance that his genius is shown. As he remarks in one of his
own poems:

Then, fourthly, there are epithets
That suit with any word--
As well as Harvey's Reading Sauce
With fish, or flesh, or bird.
Such epithets, like pepper,
Give zest to what you write;
And, if you strew them sparely,
They whet the appetite;
But if you lay them on too thick,
You spoil the matter quite!

Both Lear and Carroll suffered from the undiscerning critics who
persisted in seeing in their nonsense a hidden meaning, a cynical,
political, or other intent, veiled under the apparent foolery. Lear
takes occasion to deny this in the preface to one of his books, and
asserts not only that his rhymes and pictures have no symbolical
meaning, but that he "took more care than might be supposed to make
the subjects incapable of such misinterpretation."

Likewise, "Jabberwocky" was declared by one critic to be a
translation from the German, and by others its originality was