Hartley became a cast-away. After a
childhood of singular genius, manifested in many modes and forms, and
described with charming effect by his brother in the best passages and
anecdotes of the memoir, he was launched without due discipline or
preparation into the University of Oxford, where the catastrophe of his
life befell. He had first fairly shown his powers when the hard doom
went forth which condemned them to waste and idleness. He obtained a
fellowship-elect at Oriel, was dismissed on the ground of intemperance
before his probationary year had passed, and wandered for the rest of
his days by the scenes with which his father most wished to surround his
childhood--

("But thou, my babe, shall wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountains, and beneath the clouds
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags")

--listening with hardly less than his father's delight to the sounds and
voices of nature, in homely intimacy with all homely folk, uttering now
and then piercing words of wisdom or regret, teaching little children in
village schools, and----.

Well, it would be perhaps too much to say that he continued to justify
the rejection of the Oriel fellows. Who knows how largely that event may
itself have contributed to what it too hastily anticipated and too
finally condemned? It appears certain that the weakness had not thus
early made itself known to Hartley's general acquaintance at the
University. Mr. Dyce had nothing painful to remember of him, but
describes him as a young man possessing an intellect of the highest
order, with great simplicity of character and considerable oddity of
manner; and he hints that the college authorities had probably resented,
in the step they took, certain attacks more declamatory than serious
which Hartley had got into the habit of indulging against all
established institutions. Mr. Derwent Coleridge touches this part of the
subject very daintily. "My brother was, however, _I am afraid_, more
sincere in his invectives against establishments, as they appeared to
his eyes at Oxford, and elsewhere, _than Mr. Dyce kindly supposes_." How
poor Hartley would have laughed at that!

One thing to the last he continued. The simplicity of character which
Mr. Dyce attributes to his youth remained with him till long after his
hair was prematurely white. As Wordsworth hoped for him in his
childhood, he kept