Page:The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats, 1899.djvu/27

Rh doubt laid the foundation of his love of civil and religious liberty.' Still more definite in its relation to his art was the intimate acquaintance he then formed with Tooke's Pantheon and Lemprière's Dictionary. The death of Keats's mother brought an interruption to his schooling. The grandmother, who was still living, created a trust for the benefit of the Keats children, and committed its care to two guardians, one of whom, Mr. Richard Abbey, was the active trustee, and though the fund seems to have been reasonably sufficient to protect the young people against the ordinary demands for a living, both John and George Keats seem always to have been sorely pinched for means. Mr. Abbey at once removed John Keats from school and had him apprenticed to a surgeon, Mr. Hammond, for a term of five years. Mr. Hammond lived at Edmonton, not far from Enfield, and Keats was wont to walk over to the Clarkes' once a week or oftener to see his friends and borrow books.

He was just fifteen when he began thus to equip himself for a place in the world, and for a little more than five years he was in training for the practice of medicine and surgery. His apprenticeship to Mr. Hammond did not last as long as this, for the indentures were cancelled about a year before the term expired, but Keats then went up to London to continue his studies at St. Thomas's and Guy's hospitals. He passed with credit his examination as licentiate at Apothecaries' Hall, July 26, 1815, and received an appointment at Guy's in the March following. It does not appear exactly when he abandoned his profession. It may be said, with some truth, that he never actually abandoned it in intention; he held it in reserve as a possible resort, but it seems doubtful if he ever took up the practice formally outside the walls of the hospital. Once when his friend Charles Cowden Clarke asked him about his attitude toward his profession, he expressed his grave doubt if he should go on with it. 'The other day,' he said to him, 'during the lecture, there came a sunbeam into the room, and with it a whole troop of creatures floating in the ray; and I was off with them to Oberon and fairy land.' 'My last operation,' he told another man, 'was the opening of a man's temporal artery. I did it with the utmost nicety, but reflecting on what passed through my mind at the time, my dexterity seemed a miracle, and I never took up the lancet again.'

It may be assumed that not later than the summer of 1816, when Keats was approaching his majority, he laid aside his instruments, never to resume them. It is not easy to reckon the contribution which these years of study and of brief practice in the medical art made to his intellectual, much less to his poetical development. With his active mind he no doubt appropriated some facts—perhaps we owe to his studies some lines in his verse, as that in 'Isabella,' where in describing the Ceylon diver contributing to the brothers' wealth, he says:—

but it is more probable that, like many another young student, he went through his tasks with sufficient fidelity to secure proper credit, but without any of that