This original tendency and formation are thus described by his brother: "He had a certain infirmity of will--the specific evil of his life. His sensibility was intense, and he had not wherewithal to control it. He could not open a letter without trembling. He shrank from mental pain--he was beyond measure impatient of constraint. He was liable to paroxysms of rage, often the disguise of pity, self-accusation, or other painful emotion--anger it could hardly be called--during which he bit his arm or finger violently. He yielded, as it were unconsciously, to slight temptations, slight in themselves, and slight to him, as if swayed by a mechanical impulse apart from his own volition. It looked like an organic defect--a congenital imperfection." "Of such materials wretched men are made." And so it fared with poor Hartley Coleridge. Up, indeed, to the time (1814) when he left school, he seems to have been as happy as most schoolboys are--nay, happier than most, in constant intercourse with Mr. Wordsworth, carrying on his English studies in his library at Allanbank, in the vale of Grasmere, and having become acquainted with John Wilson, then residing at his beautiful seat, Elleray, on the banks of Windermere, who became from that time, and continued to the last, one of his kindest friends. Through Mr. Southey's active intervention, he was sent to Merton College, Oxford. His curriculum there was at first distinguished. If inferior in scholarship to many, he yielded to none in general knowledge, in genius, and, above all, in conversation. Ultimately he gained a fellowship in Oriel, with high distinction. But his powers of table-talk became snares to him, and at the close of his probationary year he "was judged to have forfeited his fellowship on the ground mainly of intemperance." Great efforts were made by his father and others to reverse the sentence--but in vain. His ruin was now only a question of time. He repaired to London, but the precarious life of a man of letters was fitted to nurse instead of checking his morbid tendencies and unhappy habits. He next returned to the Lake country, commenced a school in conjunction with another gentleman, and even talked of entering into holy orders. But nothing would prosper with him. His school dwindled away, and he was reduced to make a scrambling livelihood by contributing to periodicals; domesticated the while at Grasmere, in the house of a farmer's widow. Various attempts were made, ever and anon, to make him useful--by taking him to Leeds to edit a biographical work, assisting a friend in teaching school at Ledbergh, &c; but all in vain. To Grasmere he as uniformly found his way back, to resume his erratic existence. In 1845, his mother's death brought him an annuity, which placed him on a footing of complete independence. During all this time he was employed fitfully in literary effort, wrote poems, contributed papers to "Blackwood's Magazine," and delivered occasional