friendship, which
lasted till Mr. Dodgson's death. In his first letter to Miss Thomson
he speaks of himself as one who for twenty years had found his one
amusement in photographing from life--especially photographing
children; he also said that he had made attempts ("most
unsuccessfully") at drawing them. When he got to know her more
intimately, he asked her to criticise his work, and when she wrote
expressing her willingness to do so, he sent her a pile of
sketch-books, through which she went most carefully, marking the
mistakes, and criticising, wherever criticism seemed to be necessary.

After this he might often have been seen in her studio, lying flat on
his face, and drawing some child-model who had been engaged for his
especial benefit. "I _love_ the effort to draw," he wrote in one
of his letters to her, "but I utterly fail to please even my own
eye--tho' now and then I seem to get somewhere _near_ a right
line or two, when I have a live child to draw from. But I have no time
left now for such things. In the next life, I do _hope_ we shall
not only _see_ lovely forms, such as this world does not contain,
but also be able to _draw_ them."

But while he fully recognised the limits of his powers, he had great
faith in his own critical judgment; and with good reason, for his
perception of the beautiful in contour and attitude and grouping was
almost unerring. All the drawings which Miss Thomson made for his
"Three Sunsets" were submitted to his criticism, which descended to
the smallest details. He concludes a letter to her, which contained
the most elaborate and minute suggestions for the improvement of one
of these pictures, with the following words: "I make all these
suggestions with diffidence, feeling that I have _really no_
right at all, as an amateur, to criticise the work of a real artist."

The following extract from another letter to Miss Thomson shows that
seeking after perfection, that discontent with everything short of the
best, which was so marked a feature of his character. She had sent him
two drawings of the head of some child-friend of his:--

Your note is a puzzle--you say that "No. 2 would have been
still more like if the paper had been exactly the same
shade--but I'd no more at hand of the darker colour." Had I
given you the impression that I was in a _hurry_, and
was willing to have No. 2 _less_ good than it
_might_ be made, so long as I could have it
_quick?