Select Prose of Robert Southey. Edited by Jacob Zeitlin. (Macmillan
and Co. 6s. 6d. net.)—Southey's prose works are so voluminous and so unequal that few people read them. Yet Southey at his beet is an entertaining author, and Mr. Zeitlin's selections may be read with interest and pleasure. Southey would have been flattered by the idea that a Doctor of the University of Illinois would rediscover his prose three-quarters of a century after his death. Half the volume is naturally given to fragments from The Doctor, that undigested medley of fine, dull, or stupid things which Southey produced in his later years, and one of those fragments is of course " The Story of the Three Bears," now so familiar to every child that it is usually regarded as a nursery- tale of immense antiquity. The admirable Scenes from the Lake Country is freely drawn upon, and there are some good pages from Southey's Peninsular War, which was killed before it was finished by the appear. ance of Napier's great work. The Naval History is not represented, presumably because Mr. Hannay has published selections from it. Mr. Zeitlin provides a good biographical introduction.
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