THE LETTERS OF ROBERT SOUTHEY, GOOD letters always make good
reading, and Southey was a prince among letter-writers. That being so, the volume of selections from his letters made by Mr. Maurice Fitzgerald is one which will be welcome to all lovers of sound literature. The introduction to the present volume, though short, is not inadequate, and we are glad to see that Mr. Fitzgerald deals faithfully with the absurd notion that Southey was the tyro of reactionary Tory. As he says, to speak like that is an 0' The Letters of Robert Southey: a Selection. Edited by Maurice II. Fitz. ererald. London : limey Frowdo. [le: net.1 abuse of language. There was no man more occupied with the social problem and more anxious to solve it in the true interests of the poor than Robert Southey. It is, of course, even more ridiculous to represent Southey as a courtly hireling or a mercenary turn-coat. Mr. Walter Bagehot, in one of the most fascinating of his essays, tells us with charac- teristic whim that " Southey, who lived with domestic women, actually died in the belief that be was a great poet." Possibly he was not a great poet, though, if such a phrase is not a contradiction in terms, he was a very competent one. We are by no means sure, however, that it would not be true to say of him that he was a great prose writer, so sound and efficient is his writing. At any rate, if not a great man be was in the widest and best sense a good man. Not only did his lips utter nothing base, but he would sacrifice himself for any good cause. Ho was, too, always tender to sufferers and to those who needed his help. Our object here, however, is not to praise a man who needs no praise, but to show something of the lighter side of his work. Let anybody who imagines Southey to be a harsh, dull, crusted Tory penman read the delightful letter to Mr. Grosvenor Bedford on the mystery of "The Zombi," a eat temporarily attached to the Southey
household :— "You, Grosvenor, who are a phi/ogalist, and therofore under- stand more of cat nature than has ever boon attained by the most profound naturalists, know how difficult it is to reconcile a cat to a new domicile. When the sack was opened, the kitchen door, which leads into the passage, was open also, and the cat dis- appeared; not indeed like a flash of lightning, but as fast as one —that is to say, for all purposes of a simile. There was no chance of his making his way back to the pigeon-house. He might have done this had ho boon carried thrice the distance in any other direction; but in this there was either a river to cross, or a part of the town to pass, both of which were such obstacles to his travels that we wore quite sure all on this side of them was to him terra incognita. Food, therefore, was placed whore he would be likely to find it in the night ; and, at the unanimous desire of the children, I took upon myself the charge of providing him with a name, for it is not proper that a oat should remain without one. Taking into consideration his complexion, as well as his sox, my first thought was to call him Henrique Diaz, a name which poor Koster would have approved had he been living to have heard it; but it presently occurred to me that the Zombi* would be an appellation equally appropriate and more dignified. The Zombi, therefore, he was named. It was soon ascertained that the Zombi had taken possession of poor Wilsey's cellar which, being filled with pea-sticks, afforded him a secure hiding place ; the kitchen also of that part of the house being forsaken, he was in perfect quiet. Food was laid for him every day, and the children waited impatiently for the time when the Zombi would become acquainted with the house, and suffer them to become acquainted with him. Once or twice in the evening he was seen out of doors and it was known that he reconnoitred the promises in the night ; but in obstinate retirement he continued from Saturday till Saturday, seven days and nights, notwithstanding all kind words were used to bring him out, as if he had determined to live and die a hermit. . .
We wish sincerely that we had time to deal further with the strange case of the Zombi or to consider with Southey the various explanations of the Zombi's subsequent conduct. In the middle of the night, like the voice in Macbeth, he "cried to all the house," but why he cried was not discovered then and can now never be known. We can only note that Southey tells us that "some of the women who measure the power of rats by their own fears would have it that he was bitten by a rat, or by an association of rats ; but to this I indignantly replied that in that case the ground would have been strewn with their bodies, and that it would have been the rats' cry, not the Zombi's, that would have been heard." it was no cry of bodily fear—of that we are certain. In all probability the Zombi was practising his slogan—yet it was something more than a mere shout of battle. On that the evidence is clear. The exile's cry was a cry of the heart also, like that of the Mulligan, when he shouted "Mulligan Aboo !" at Mr. Perkins's. It was a deeper passion than defiance that moved him. So with the Zombi. If we have "left half told the story of the Zombi bold" we have the consolation that our action may probably send readers to a very charming little book.
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