miscoranda: by Sean B. Palmer

Lewis Carroll wrote the first stanza of Jabberwocky for his family periodical, Mischmasch, in the late 1850s—some twenty years before the Alice books. It's thought that Menella Bute Smedley's translation of The Shepherd of the Giant Mountains in 1846 forms part of the inspiration for the poem, but something that appears prominent to me is the connection with two lines from the opening scene of Hamlet. The similarity is remarkable:

The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead

Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:

—Hamlet; Act I, Scene i

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

—Jabberwocky; Stanza I

But oddly enough, this similarity appears to not be mentioned anywhere else on the entire web. Does anyone know of any comparison drawn between these two elsewhere? Really the only difference is that the terms have been Carrollised and the verse is in octameter instead of pentameter. Perhaps this is just so obvious that it doesn't bear pointing out?