I would, my friend, indeed, thou hadst been here Last night, beneath the shadowy sycamore, To hear the lines, to me well known before, Embalmed in music so translucent clear.  Each word of thine came singly to the ear, Yet all was blended in a flowing stream.  It had the rich repose of summer dream, The light distinct of frosty atmosphere.  Still have I loved thy verse, yet never knew How sweet it was, till woman’s voice invested The pencilled outline with the living hue, And every note of feeling proved and tested.  What might old Pindar be, if once again The harp and voice were trembling with his strain!

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His fellowship lost, he came, ruinously humbled, to live in this District, at first under compulsion to take pupils, whom, of course, he could not manage.  On the death of his mother, an annuity was purchased for him, and paid quarterly, to keep him out of debt, if possible.  He could not take care of money, and he was often hungry, and often begged the loan of a sixpence; and when the publicans made him welcome to what he pleased to have, in consideration of the company he brought together, to hear his wonderful talk, his wit, and his dreams, he was helpless in the snare.  We must remember that he was a fine scholar, as well as a dreamer and a humorist; and there was no order of intellect, from the sage to the peasant, which could resist the charm of his discourse.  He had taken his degree with high distinction at Oxford; and yet the old Westmoreland “statesman,” who, offered whiskey and water, accepts the one and says the other can be had anywhere, would sit long to hear what Hartley had to tell of what he had seen or dreamed.  At gentlemen’s tables, it was a chance how he might talk,—­sublimely, sweetly, or with a want of tact which made sad confusion.  In the midst of the great black-frost at the close of 1848, he was at a small dinner-party at the house of a widow lady, about four miles from his lodgings.  During dinner, some scandal was talked about some friends of his to whom he was warmly attached.  He became excited on their behalf,—­took Champagne before he had eaten enough, and, before the ladies left the table, was no longer master of himself.  His host, a very young man, permitted some practical joking:  brandy was ordered, and given to the unconscious Hartley; and by eleven o’clock he was clearly unfit to walk home alone.  His hostess sent her footman with him, to see him home.  The man took him through Ambleside, and then left him to find his way for the other two miles.  The cold was as severe as any ever known in this climate; and it was six in the morning when his landlady heard some noise in the porch, and found Hartley stumbling in.  She put him to bed, put hot bricks to his feet, and tried all the proper means; and in the middle of the day he insisted on getting up and going out.  He called at the house of a friend, Dr. S——­, near Ambleside.  The kind physician scolded him for coming out, sent for a carriage, took him home, and put him to bed.  He never rose again, but died on the 6th of January, 1849.  The young host and the old hostess have followed him, after deeply deploring that unhappy day.