[3] Hartley spent his early years in the care of Robert Southey at Greta Hall, which possessed the best library in the neighbourhood.

Hartley and Derwent lived in the home of an elderly woman, and enjoyed total freedom in their after-school hours.

He had one close friend at the time, a boy named Robert Jameson, not a fellow student, to whom he afterwards addressed a series of sonnets.

[3] Somewhere along the way, Hartley conceived the idea of an underground stream of water that would eventually erupt onto the surface, creating a mighty river that would soon attract merchants and land developers, leading to the formation of a new island-continent.

From 1816 to 1820 he was in receipt of an exhibition funded from the bequest of James Wood administered by the Worshipful Company of Bowyers of the City of London.

Derwent Coleridge made this comment about his brother's time at Oxford:[3] Though far from a destructive in politics, he was always keenly alive to what he supposed to be the evils and abuses of the existing state of things both in Church and State, while he remained constant in his allegiance to what he believed to be the essentials of both... On all subjects he spoke his mind, often, through whim or impatience, more than his mind, freely, without regard to consequences.On a vacation in 1818 Hartley met the poet Chauncy Hare Townshend, who said the following of him:[3] I cannot easily convey to you the impression of interest which he made on my mind at that time.

There was something so wonderfully original in his method of expressing himself, that on me, then a young man, and only cognisant externally of the prose of life, his sayings, all stamped with the impress of poetry, produced an effect analogous to that which the mountains of Cumberland, and the scenery of the North, were working on my southern-born eye and imagination.He had inherited much of his father's character, and his lifestyle was such that, although he was successful in gaining a fellowship at Oriel College,[8] at the close of the probationary year (1820) he was judged to have forfeited it, mainly on the grounds of intemperance.

[3] His next step was to become a partner in a school at Ambleside, at the suggestion of his family and friends, a venture which he himself carried out with reluctance, but this scheme failed.

Hartley made the following comment about his father's death in a letter to his mother:[3] ... though I cannot say that I was much surprised, yet so little had I prepared my mind for the loss, that it fell upon me as the fulfilment of an unbelieved prophecy: and even yet, though I know it, I hardly believe it.

and when the recollection awakes, that I have no father, it appears more like a possible evil than an actual bereavement.In 1839 he brought out his edition of Philip Massinger and John Ford, with biographies of both dramatists.

[3] Hartley Coleridge's literary reputation chiefly rests on his works of criticism, on his Prometheus,[13] an unfinished lyric drama, and on his sonnets (a form which suited his particular skills).