The effects of the idleness enforced upon him at the Northampton free grammar school, were felt at Oxford. It was difficult for a sprightly and clever boy, like Hervey, to lay aside, all at once, the unstudious habits of the last ten years, and to devote himself, with unflagging earnestness, to the academical pursuits which now demanded his attention. For two years, from 1731 to 1733, he was idle at Oxford, as he had been obliged to be idle at Northampton. At the end of that time, he became acquainted with the Methodists, and distinguished himself, as they also did, by his devotion to the duties of religion, and to his collegiate studies. Wesley rendered him considerable assistance, especially by giving him instructions in the Hebrew language. “Oxon, Sept. 2, 1736. I hereby thank you, as for all other favours, so especially for teaching me Hebrew.” Thus wrote Hervey, at the age of twenty-two, when he had taken his degree of Bachelor of Arts, and was leaving the university to enter upon the duties of the Christian ministry. Eleven years afterwards, when in the midst of the fame arising from the recent publication of his “Meditations among the Tombs,” etc., he wrote to Wesley another letter:— “WESTON, NEAR NORTHAMPTON, _December 30, 1747_. “Assure yourself, dear sir, that I can never forget the tender-hearted and generous Fellow of Lincoln, who condescended to take such compassionate notice of a poor under-graduate, whom almost everybody condemned; and when no man cared for my soul.”[143] Here we pause, to take a glance at Hervey during his five years’ residence at Oxford. John Gambold, writing of him, while he was still at college, says:— “He is a man of surprising greatness of soul; and, if you look for his virtues, you will not be able to discover them one by one, but you will see that he walks before God with a reverence and alacrity which includes them all.”[144] Hervey became one of the Oxford Methodists in 1733, when he was only nineteen years of age. In the same year, he wrote as follows to his sister:— “LINCOLN COLLEGE, OXON, _Sept. 16, 1733_.