er; during her last illness he would sit up all night
with her, give her her medicine, and even cook her food himself. At her
death he was brokenhearted.

The children were now put under the care of two guardians, one of whom,
Mr. Abbey, taking the sole responsibility, immediately removed John from
school and apprenticed him for five years to a surgeon at Edmonton.

Whilst thus employed Keats spent all his leisure time in reading, for
which he had developed a great enthusiasm during his last two years at
school. There he had devoured every book that came in his way,
especially rejoicing in stories of the gods and goddesses of ancient
Greece. At Edmonton he was able to continue his studies by borrowing
books from his friend Charles Cowden Clarke, the son of his
schoolmaster, and he often went over to Enfield to change his books and
to discuss those which he had been reading. On one of these occasions
Cowden Clarke introduced him to Spenser, to whom so many poets have owed
their first inspiration that he has been called 'the poets' poet'; and
it was then, apparently, that Keats was first prompted to write.

When he was nineteen, a year before his apprenticeship came to an end,
he quarrelled with his master, left him, and continued his training in
London as a student at St. Thomas's Hospital and Guy's. Gradually,
however, during the months that followed, though he was an industrious
and able medical student, Keats came to realize that poetry was his true
vocation; and as soon as he was of age, in spite of the opposition of
his guardian, he decided to abandon the medical profession and devote
his life to literature.

If Mr. Abbey was unsympathetic Keats was not without encouragement from
others. His brothers always believed in him whole-heartedly, and his
exceptionally lovable nature had won him many friends. Amongst these
friends two men older than himself, each famous in his own sphere, had
special influence upon him.

One of them, Leigh Hunt, was something of a poet himself and a pleasant
prose-writer. His encouragement did much to stimulate Keats's genius,
but his direct influence on his poetry was wholly bad. Leigh Hunt's was
not a deep nature; his poetry is often trivial and sentimental, and his
easy conversational style is intolerable when applied to a great theme.
To this man's influence, as well as to the surroundings of his youth,
are doubtless due the occasional flaws of taste in Keats's early work.

The ot