r his master's
desk, passionately inconsolable. The four children, who inherited from
their grandparents (chiefly from their grandmother) a moderate fortune
of nearly L8,000 altogether, in which the daughter had the largest
share, were then left under the guardianship of Mr. Abbey, a city
merchant residing at Walthamstow. At the age of fifteen, or at some date
before the close of 1810, John quitted his school.

A little stave of doggrel which Keats wrote to his sister, probably in
July 1818, gives a glimpse of what he was like at the time when he and
his brothers were living with their grandmother.

"There was a naughty boy,
And a naughty boy was he:
He kept little fishes
In washing-tubs three,
In spite
Of the might
Of the maid,
Nor afraid
Of his granny good.
He often would
Hurly-burly
Get up early
And go
By hook or crook
To the brook,
And bring home
Miller's-thumb,
Tittlebat,
Not over fat,
Minnows small
As the stall
Of a glove,
Not above
The size
Of a nice
Little baby's
Little fingers."

He was fond of "goldfinches, tomtits, minnows, mice,
ticklebacks, dace, cock-salmons, and all the whole tribe of the bushes
and the brooks."

A career in life was promptly marked out for the youth. While still aged
fifteen, he was apprenticed, with a premium of L210, to Mr. Hammond, a
surgeon of some repute at Edmonton. Mr. Cowden Clarke says that this
arrangement evidently gave Keats satisfaction: apparently he refers
rather to the convenient vicinity of Edmonton to Enfield than to the
surgical profession itself. The indenture was to have lasted five years;
but, for some reason which is not wholly apparent, Keats left Hammond
before the close of his apprenticeship.[1] If Haydon was rightly
informed (presumably by Keats himself), the reason was that the youth
resented surgery as the antagonist of a possible poetic vocation, and
"at last his master, weary of his disgust, gave him up his time." He
then took to walking St. Thomas's Hospital; and, after a short stay at
No. 8 Dean Street, Borough, and next in St. Thomas's Street, he resided
along with his two brothers--who were at the time clerks in Mr. Abbey's
office--in the Poultry, Cheapside, over the passage which led to the
Queen's Arms Tavern. Two of his surgical companions were