In the village of Enfield, in Middlesex, ten miles on the north road from London, was my father, John Clarke's school. The house had been built by a West India merchant, in the latter end of the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth century. It was of the better character of the domestic architecture of that period, the whole front being of the purest red brick, wrought, by means of moulds, into rich designs of flowers and pomegranates, with heads of cherubim over two niches in the centre of the building. The elegance of the design and the perfect finish of the structure were such as to secure its protection, when a branch railway was brought from the Ware and Cambridge line to Enfield. The old school-house was converted into the station-house, and the railway company had the good taste to leave intact one of the few remaining specimens of the graceful English domestic architecture of long-gone days. Any of my readers who may happen to have a file of the London "Illustrated News," may find in No. 360, March 3, 1849, a not prodigiously enchanting wood-cut of the edifice.

Here it was that John Keats all but commenced and did complete his schooleducation. He was born on the 29th of October, 1795; and I think he was one of the little fellows who had not wholly emerged from the child's costume upon being placed under my father's care. It will be readily conceived difficult to recall from the "dark backward and abysm" of nearly sixty years the general acts of perhaps the youngest individual in a corporation of between seventy and eighty youngsters; and very little more of Keats's child-life can I remember than that he had a brisk, winning face, and was a favorite with all, particularly with my mother.

His maternal grandfather, Jennings, was proprietor of a large livery-stable, called "The Swan and Hoop," on the pavement in Moorfields, opposite the entrance into Finsbury Circus. He had two sons at my father's school. The elder was an officer in Duncan's ship in the fight off Camperdown. After the battle, the Dutch Admiral, De Winter, pointing to young Jennings, told Duncan that he had fired several shots at that young man, and always missed his mark ;-no credit to his steadiness of aim; for Jennings, like his own admiral, was considerably above the ordinary dimensions of stature.

Keats's father was the principal servant at the Swan and Hoop Stables, — a man of so remarkably fine a commonsense and native respectability, that I perfectly remember the warm terms in which his demeanor used to be canvassed by my parents after he had been to visit his boys. He was short of stature and well-knit in person, (John resembling him both in make and feature,) with brown hair and dark hazel eyes. He was killed by a fall from his horse, in returning from a visit to the school. John's two brothers, George, older, and Thomas, younger than himself, were like the mother, who was tall, of good figure, with large, oval face, sombre features, and grave in behavior. of the family was a sister, think, much younger than all, I remember my mother once speaking with much fondness, for her pretty, simple manners, while she was walking in the garden with her brothers. She married Mr. Llanos, a Spanish refugee, the author of "Don Estéban," and Sandoval, the Free-Mason." He was a man of liberal principles, attractive manners, and more than ordinary accomplishments.This is the amount of my knowledge and recollection of the family.

The last Fanny, I of whom

In the early part of his school-life, John gave no extraordinary indications of intellectual character; but it was remembered of him afterwards, that there was ever present a determined and steady spirit in all his undertakings; and, although of a strong and impulsive will, I never knew it misdirected in his required pursuit of study. He was a most orderly scholar. The future ramifications of that noble genius were then closely shut in the seed, and greedily drinking in the moisture which made it afterwards burst forth so kindly into luxuriance and beauty.

My father was in the habit, at each half-year's vacation, of bestowing prizes upon those pupils who had performed the greatest quantity of voluntary extra work; and such was Keats's indefatigable energy for the last two or three successive half-years of his remaining at school, that, upon each occasion, he took the first prize by a considerable distance. He was at work before the first school-hour began, and that was at seven o'clock; almost all the intervening times of recreation were so devoted; and during the afternoon-holidays, when all were at play, I have seen him in the school, — almost the only one, at his Latin or French translation; and so unconscious and regardless was he of the consequences of this close and persevering application, that he never would have taken the necessary exercise, had he not been sometimes driven out by one of us for the purpose.

I have said that he was a favorite with all. Not the less beloved was he for having a highly pugnacious spirit, which, when roused, was one of the most picturesque exhibitions -off the stageI ever saw. One of the transports of that marvellous actor, Edmund Keanwhom, by the way, he idolized was its nearest resemblance; and the two were not very dissimilar in face and figure. I remember, upon one occasion, when an usher, on account of some impertinent behavior, had boxed his brother Tom's ears, John rushed up, put him

who

self in the received posture of offence, and, I believe, struck the usher, could have put him into his pocket. His passions at times were almost ungovernable; his brother George, being considerably the taller and stronger, used frequently to hold him down by main force, when he was in "one of his moods" and was endeavoring to beat him. It was all, however, a wisp-of-straw conflagration; for he had an intensely tender affection for his brothers, and proved it upon the most trying occasions. He was not merely the "favorite of all," like a pet prize-fighter, for his terrier courage; but his high-mindedness, his utter unconsciousness of a mean motive, his placability, his generosity, wrought so general a feeling in his behalf, that I never heard a word of disapproval from any one who had known him, superior or equal.

The latter part of the time—perhaps eighteen months that he remained at school, he occupied the hours during meals in reading. Thus his whole time was engrossed. He had a tolerably retentive memory, and the quantity that he read was surprising. He must in those last months have exhausted the school-library, which consisted principally of abridgments of all the voyages and travels of any note; Mavor's Collection; also his Universal History; Robertson's Histories of Scotland, America, and Charles the Fifth; all Miss Edgeworth's productions; together with many other works, equally well calculated for youth, not necessary to be enumerated. The books, however, that were his constantly recurrent sources of attraction were Tooke's "Pantheon," Lemprière's "Classical Dictionary," which he appeared to learn, and Spence's "Polymetis.” This was the store whence he acquired his perfect intimacy with the Greek mythology; here was he "suckled in that creed outworn"; for his amount of classical attainment extended no farther than the "Eneid"; with which epic, indeed, he was so fascinated, that before leaving school he had voluntarily translated in writing a considerable portion. And yet

I remember that at that early age, mayhap under fourteen,

notwithstand

ing and through all its incidental attractiveness, he hazarded the opinion to me that there was feebleness in the structure of the work. He must have gone through all the better publications in the schoollibrary, for he asked me to lend him some of my own books; and I think I now see him at supper, (we had all our meals in the school-room,) sitting back on the form, and holding the folio volume of Burnet's "History of his own Time" between himself and the table, eating his meal from beyond it. This work, and Leigh Hunt's "Examiner" newspaper, - which my father took in, and I used to lend to Keats, I make no doubt laid the foundation of his love of civil and religious liberty. He once told me, smiling, that one of his guardians, being informed what books I had lent him to read, declared, that, if he had fifty children, he would not send one of them to my father's school.

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When he left us, I think at fourteen years of age, he was apprenticed to Mr. Thomas Hammond, a medical man, residing in Church Street, Edmonton, and exactly two miles from Enfield. This arrangement appeared to give him satisfaction; and I fear that it was the most placid period of his painful life; for now, with the exception of the duty he had to perform in the surgery, and which was by no means an onerous one, his whole leisure hours were employed in indulging his passion for reading and translating. It was during his apprenticeship that he finished the latter portion of the "Æneid."

The distance between our residences being so short, I encouraged his inclination to come over, when he could be spared; and in consequence, I saw him about five or six times a month, commonly on Wednesdays and Saturdays, those afternoons being my own most leisure times. He rarely came empty-handed; either he had a book to read, or brought one with him to be exchanged. When the weather permitted, we always sat in

an arbor at the end of a spacious garden, and, in Boswellian phrase, "we had good talk."

I cannot at this time remember what was the spark that fired the train of his poetical tendencies,—I do not remember what was the first signalized poetry he read; but he must have given me unmistakable tokens of his bent of taste; otherwise, at that early stage of his career, I never could have read to him the "Epithalamion" of Spenser; and this I perfectly remember having done, and in that (to me) hallowed old arbor, the scene of many bland and graceful associations, all the substances having passed away. He was at that time, I should suppose, fifteen or sixteen years old; and at that period of life he certainly appreciated the general beauty of the composition, and felt the more passionate passages; for his features and exclamations were ecstatic. How often have I in after-times heard him quote these lines:

"Behold, whiles she before the altar stands,
Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks,
And blesses her with his two happy hands,
How the red roses flush up in her cheeks!
And the pure snow, with goodly vermil stain,
Like crimson dyed in grain,
That even the angels, which continually
About the sacred altar do remain,
Forget their service, and about her fly,
Oft peeping in her face, that seems more fair,
The more they on it stare;

But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground,
Are governed with goodly modesty,

That suffers not one look to glance awry, Which may let in a little thought unsound."

That night he took away with him the first volume of the "Faery Queen," and went through it, as I told his biographer, Mr. Monckton Milnes, " as a young horse would through a spring meadow, ramping!" Like a true poet, too, - a poet "born, not manufactured," a poet in grain, he especially singled out the epithets, for that felicity and power in which Spenser is so eminent. He hoisted himself up, and looked burly and dominant, as he said, - "What an image that is,— 'Sea-shouldering whales'!"

It was a treat to see as well as hear

him read a pathetic passage. Once, when reading the " Cymbeline" aloud, I saw his eyes fill with tears, and for some moments he was unable to proceed, when he came to the departure of Posthumus, and Imogen's saying she would have watched him

"till the diminution

Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle;
Nay, followed him till he had melted from
The smallness of a gnat to air; and then
Have turned mine eye and wept."

I cannot quite reconcile the time of our separating at this stage of his career, which of us first went to London; but it was upon an occasion when I was walking thither, and, I think, to see Leigh Hunt, who had just fulfilled his penalty of confinement in Horsemonger-Lane Prison for the trivial libel upon the Prince Regent, that Keats, who was coming over to Enfield, met me, and, turning, accompanied me back part of the way to Edmonton. At the last field-gate, when taking leave, he gave me the sonnet entitled, “Written on the Day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison." Unless I am utterly mistaken, this was the first proof I had received of his having committed himself in verse; and how clearly can I recall the conscious look with which he hesitatingly offered it! There are some momentary glances of beloved friends that fade only with life. I am not in a position to contradict the statement of his biographer, that "the lines in imitation of Spenser,

'Now Morning from her orient chamber came,

And her first footsteps touched a verdant hill,' etc.,

are the earliest known verses of his composition"; from the subject being the inspiration of his first love and such a love!-in poetry, it is most probable; but certainly his first published poem was the sonnet commencing,

'O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell"; and that will be found in the "Examiner," some time, as I conjecture, in 1816, -for I have not the paper to refer to,

and, indeed, at this distance, both of time and removal from the means of verification, I would not be dogmatical.

When we both had come to London, — he to enter as a student of St. Thomas's Hospital, — he was not long in discovering that my abode was with my brotherin-law, in Little Warner Street, Clerkenwell; and just at that time I was installed housekeeper, and was solitary. He, therefore, would come and revive his loved gossip, till, as the author of the "Urn Burial" says, 66 we were acting our antipodes, the huntsmen were up in America, and they already were past their first sleep in Persia." At this time he lived in his first lodging upon coming to London, near to St. Thomas's Hospital. I find his address in a letter which must have preceded my appointing him to come and lighten my darkness in Clerkenwell. At the close of the letter, he says, — “ Although the Borough is a beastly place in dirt, turnings, and windings, yet No. 8, Dean Street, is not difficult to find; and

if you would run the gauntlet over London Bridge, take the first turning to the left, and then the first to the right, and, moreover, knock at my door, which is nearly opposite a meeting, you would do me a charity, which, as St. Paul saith, is the father of all the virtues. At all events, let me hear from you soon: I say, at all events, not excepting the gout in your fingers." I have little doubt that this letter (which has no other date than the day of the week, and no post-mark) preceded our first symposium; and a memorable night it was in my life's career.

A copy, and a beautiful one, of the folio edition of Chapman's Homer had been lent me. It was the property of Mr. Alsager, the gentleman who for years had contributed no small share of celebrity to the great reputation of the "Times" newspaper, by the masterly manner in which he conducted the money-market department of that journal. At the time when I was first introduced to Mr. Alsager, he was living opposite Horsemonger-Lane Prison; and upon Mr. Leigh Hunt's being sentenced for

the libel, his first day's dinner was sent over by Mr. Alsager. He was a man of the most studiously correct demeanor, with a highly cultivated taste and judgment in the fine arts and music. He succeeded Hazlitt, (which was no insignificant honor,) and for some time contributed the critiques upon the theatres, but ended by being the reporter of the state of the money-market. He had long been accustomed to have the first trial at his own house of the best-reputed new foreign instrumental music, which he used to import from Germany.

Well, then, we were put in possession of the Homer of Chapman, and to work we went, turning to some of the "famousest" passages, as we had scrappily known them in Pope's version. There was, for instance, that perfect scene of the conversation on Troy wall of the old Senators with Helen, who is pointing out to them the several Greek captains, with that wonderfully vivid portrait of an orator, in Ulysses, in the Third Book, beginning at the 237th line,

"But when the prudent Ithacus did to his counsels rise";

the helmet and shield of Diomed, in the opening of the Fifth Book; the prodigious description of Neptune's passage in his chariot to the Achive ships, in the opening of the Thirteenth Book, – "The woods, and all the great hills near, trembled beneath the weight

Of his immortal moving feet." The last was the whole of the shipwreck of Ulysses in the Fifth Book of the "Odyssey." I think his expression of delight, during the reading of those dozen lines, was never surpassed :

"Then forth he came, his both knees faltering, both

His strong hands hanging down, and all with froth

His cheeks and nostrils flowing, voice and breath

Spent to all use, and down he sunk to death. The sea had soaked his heart through; all his veins

His toils had racked t' a laboring woman's pains. Dead weary was he."

"From mouth and nose the briny torrent ran, And lost in lassitude lay all the man.”

Chapman supplied us with many an after-feast; but it was in the teeming wonderment of this, his first introduction, that, when I came down to breakfast the next morning, I found upon my table a letter with no other inclosure than his famous sonnet, "On first looking into Chapman's Homer." We had parted, as I have already said, at day-spring; yet he contrived that I should receive the poem, from a distance of nearly two miles, before 10, A. M. In the published copy of this sonnet he made an alteration in the seventh line:

"Yet did I never breathe its pure serene." The original, which he sent me, had the phrase,

"Yet could I never tell what men could mean ";

which he said was bald, and too simply wondering. No one could more earnestly chastise his thoughts than Keats. His favorite among Chapman's Hymns of Homer was the one to Pan, and which he himself rivalled in the "Endymion."

In one of our conversations about this period, I alluded to his position at St. Thomas's Hospital,— coasting and reconnoitring, as it were, that I might discover how he got on, and, with the total absorption that had evidently taken place of every other mood of his mind than that of imaginative composition, what was his bias for the future, and what his feeling with regard to the profession that had been chosen for him,a circumstance I did, not know at that time. He made no secret, however, that he could not sympathize with the science of anatomy, as a main pursuit in life; for one of the expressions that he used, in describing his unfitness for its mastery, was perfectly characteristic. He said, in illustration of his argument,- "The other day, for instance, during the lecture,