Blue and white china, mediæval ivories, engravings by the Little Masters, Chippendale cabinets, did not excite pining desire in Southey’s breast; yet in one direction he indulged the passion of a collector. If, with respect to any of “the things independent of the will,” he showed a want of moderation unworthy of his discipleship to Epictetus, it was assuredly with respect to books. Before he possessed a fixed home, he was already moored to his folios; and when once he was fairly settled at Keswick, many a time the carriers on the London road found their riding the larger by a weighty packet on its way to Greta Hall. Never did he run north or south for a holiday, but the inevitable parcel preceded or followed his return. Never did he cross to the Continent but a bulkier bale arrived in its own good time, enclosing precious things. His morality, in all else void of offence, here yielded to the seducer. It is thought that Southey was in the main honest; but if Dirk Hatteraick had run ashore a hundred-weight of the Acta Sanctorum duty-free, the king’s laureate was not the man to set the sharks upon him; and it is to be feared that the pattern of probity, the virtuous Southey himself, might in such circumstances be found, under cover of night, lugging his prize landwards from its retreat beneath the rocks. Unquestionably, at one time certain parcels from Portugal—only of such a size as could be carried under the arm—were silently brought ashore to the defrauding of the revenue, and somehow found their way, by-and-by, to Greta Hall. “We maintain a trade,” says the Governor of the Strangers’ House in Bacon’s philosophical romance, “not for gold, silver, or jewels, nor for silks, nor for spices, nor any other commodity of matter, but only for God’s first creature, which was _light_.” Such, too, was Southey’s trade, and he held that God’s first creature is free to travel unchallenged by revenue-cutter.