visits from him, when he would ask for wine, and talk from morning to night,—­and a woman, solitary and busy, could not undertake that sort of hospitality; but I saw how forbearing his friends were, and why,—­and I could sympathize in their regrets when he died.  I met him in company occasionally, and never saw him sober; but I have heard from several common friends of the charm of his conversation, and the beauty of his gentle and affectionate nature.  He was brought into the District when four years old; and it does not appear that he ever had a chance allowed him of growing into a sane man.  Wordsworth used to say that Hartley’s life’s failure arose mainly from his having grown up “wild as the breeze,”—­delivered over, without help or guardianship, to the vagaries of an imagination which overwhelmed all the rest of him.  There was a strong constitutional likeness to his father, evident enough to all; but no pains seem to have been taken on any hand to guard him from the snare, or to invigorate his will, and aid him in self-discipline.  The great catastrophe, the ruinous blow, which rendered him hopeless, is told in the Memoir; but there are particulars which help to account for it.  Hartley had spent his school-days under a master as eccentric as he himself ever became.  The Rev. John Dawes of Ambleside was one of the oddities that may be found in the remote places of modern England.  He had no idea of restraint, for himself or his pupils; and when they arrived, punctually or not, for morning school, they sometimes found the door shut, and chalked with “Gone a-hunting,” or “Gone a-fishing,” or gone away somewhere or other.  Then Hartley would sit down under the bridge, or in the shadow of the wood, or lie on the grass on the hill-side, and tell tales to his schoolfellows for hours.  His mind was developed by the conversation of his father and his father’s friends; and he himself had a great friendship with Professor Wilson, who always stood by him with a pitying love.  He had this kind of discursive education, but no discipline; and when he went to college, he was at the mercy of any who courted his affection, intoxicated his imagination, and then led him into vice.  His Memoir shows how he lost his fellowship at Oriel College, Oxford, at the end of his probationary year.  He had been warned by the authorities against his sin of intemperance; and he bent his whole soul to get through that probationary year.  For eleven months, and many days of the twelfth, he lived soberly and studied well.  Then the old tempters agreed in London to go down to Oxford and get hold of Hartley.  They went down on the top of the coach, got access to his room, made him drunk, and carried him with them to London; and he was not to be found when he should have passed.  The story of his death is but too like this.

[Footnote A: 

SONNET

TO TENNYSON, AFTER HEARING ABBY HUTCHINSON SING “THE MAY-QUEEN” AT AMBLESIDE.