The Hunting of The Snark, by Lewis Carroll. Translated into Latin Elegiacs, with Translator's note Appended on the Inner Meaning of The Poem, and Other Things [i.e., original work by the translator]. With a Foreword by Professor Gilbert Murray.

Bookseller Notes

Inscribed on the flyleaf: 'N.W., With the compliments & regards of the Author. Jan 1936'; the Translator, Hubert Digby Watson, has only partially got above his station here, given that the volume includes an equal weight of his own original work (with a parallel version in Latin in each case) in two sections following his Latinisation of Carroll's verse: the second of these, 'Domestic' is rather negligible, but the first tackles weightier themes - principally involving the work of Save the Children, and the League of Nations. Gilbert Murray's Foreword reveals the author to be the Chairman of the former organisation, and his introductory note returns us through skilful digression to Carroll's text - identifying political import, where 'the Franco-British proposals for the surrender of the League of Nations to Italy' (i.e., over the latter's invasion of Abyssinia) provides the reflection that '[a]t various crises of history Snarks which looked genuine and solid have proved to be Boojums'. The first Latin translation of Carroll's poem was published two years earlier, a version in Virgilian hexameter by Percival Robert Brinton - this, then, as the Translator's Preface clarifies is the first in 'Ovidian - or rather Tibullan - elegiacs'; a nice technical distinction, rendering the 'two versions [...] really quite independent of each other'. Both are scarce. The respective translators had, by coincidence, both enjoyed brief first-class cricket careers: Watson (whose brother Arthur and uncles Reginald and Kenelm Digby also played) had made ten appearances- for Oxford University whilst he was up at Balliol College; Brinton's sole appearance, for Worcestershire, was against the University - yielding one run in his single innings, to provide one of the most readily-calculable batting averages on record.