(1) “Sylvie helping beetle” [p. 193].  A quite charming
    composition.

(3) “The Doctor” and “Eric.” (Mr. Furniss’s idea of their appearance).  No!  The Doctor won’t do at all! He is a smug London man, a great “ladies’ man,” who would hardly talk anything but medical “shop.”  He is forty at least, and can have had no love-affair for the last fifteen years.  I want him to be about twenty-five, powerful in frame, poetical in face:  capable of intelligent interest in any subject, and of being a passionate lover.  How would you draw King Arthur when he first met Guinevere?  Try that type.

Eric’s attitude is capital:  but his face is a little too near to the ordinary “masher.”  Please avoid that inane creature; and please don’t cut his hair short.  That fashion will be “out” directly.

    (4) “Lady Muriel” (head); ditto (full length); “Earl.”

I don’t like either face of Lady Muriel.  I don’t think I could talk to her; and I’m quite sure I couldn’t fall in love with her.  Her dress ("evening,” of course) is very pretty, I think.

I don’t like the Earl’s face either.  He is proud of his title, very formal, and one who would keep one “at arm’s length” always.  And he is too prodigiously tall.  I want a gentle, genial old man; with whom one would feel at one’s ease in a moment.

(8) “Uggug becoming Porcupine” ("Sylvie and Bruno, Concluded,” page 388), is exactly my conception of it.  I expect this will be one of the most effective pictures in the book.  The faces of the people should express intense terror.

    (9) “The Professor” is altogether delightful.  When
    you get the text, you will see that you have hit the very
    centre of the bull’s-eye.

[A sketch of “Bruno"].  No, no!  Please don’t give us the (to my mind) very ugly, quite modern costume, which shows with such cruel distinctness a podgy, pot-bellied (excuse the vulgarism) boy, who couldn’t run a mile to save his life.  I want Bruno to be strong, but at the same time light and active—­with the figure of one of the little acrobats one sees at the circus—­not “Master Tommy,” who habitually gorges himself with pudding.  Also that dress I dislike very much.  Please give him a short tunic, and real knickerbockers—­not the tight knee-breeches they are rapidly shrinking to.

    Very truly yours,

    C. L. Dodgson.

By Mr. Furniss’s kind permission I am enabled to give an example of the other side of the correspondence, one of his letters to Mr. Dodgson, all the more interesting for the charming little sketch which it contains.

With respect to the spider, Mr. Dodgson had written:  “Some writer says that the full face of a spider, as seen under a magnifying-glass, is very striking.”

[Illustration:  Facsimile of a letter from H. Furniss to Lewis Carroll, August 23, 1886.]