Mr. Jennings, who kept a large livery-stable, the Swan and Hoop, in the
Pavement, Moorfields, London. Thomas Keats was the principal stableman
or assistant in the same business. John, a seven months' child, was born
at the Swan and Hoop on 31 October, 1795. Three other children grew
up--George, Thomas, and Fanny, John is said to have been violent and
ungovernable in early childhood. He was sent to a very well-reputed
school, that of the Rev. John Clarke, at Enfield: the son Charles Cowden
Clarke, whom I have previously mentioned, was an undermaster, and paid
particular attention to Keats. The latter did not show any remarkable
talent at school, but learned easily, and was 'a very orderly scholar,'
acquiring a fair amount of Latin but no Greek. He was active,
pugnacious, and popular among his school-fellows. The father died of a
fall from his horse in April, 1804: the mother, after re-marrying,
succumbed to consumption in February, 1810. Before the close of the same
year John left school, and he was then apprenticed, to a surgeon at
Edmonton. In July, 1815, he passed with credit the examination at
Apothecaries' Hall.

In 1812 Keats read for the first time Spenser's _Faery Queen_, and was
fascinated with it to a singular degree. This and other poetic reading
made him flag in his surgical profession, and finally he dropped it, and
for the remainder of his life had no definite occupation save that of
writing verse. From his grandparents he inherited a certain moderate sum
of money--not more than sufficient to give him a tolerable start in
life. He made acquaintance with Leigh Hunt, then editor of the
_Examiner_, John Hunt, the publisher, Charles Wentworth Dilke who became
editor of the _Athenaeum_, the painter Haydon, and others. His first
volume of Poems (memorable for little else than the sonnet _On Reading
Chapman's Homer_) was published in 1817. It was followed by _Endymion_
in April, 1818.