the establishment of Mr. Jennings, the proprietor of large livery-stables on the Pavement in Moorfields, nearly opposite the entrance into Finsbury Circus, became his master's son-in-law, and is still remembered as a man of excellent natural sense, lively and energetic countenance, and entire freedom from any vulgarity or assumption on account of his prosperous alliance. He was killed by a fall from his horse in 1804, at the early age of thirty-six. The mother, a lively intelligent woman, was supposed to have prematurely hastened the birth of John by her passionate love of amusement, though his constitution gave no signs of the peculiar debility of a seventh months child. He was born on the 29th of October, 1795.* He had two brothers, George, older than himself, Thomas, younger, and a sister much younger; John resembled his father in feature stature and manners, while the two brothers were more like their mother, who was tall, had a large oval face, and a somewhat saturnine demeanour. She succeeded however in inspiring her children with the profoundest affection, and especially John, who, when, on an occasion of illness, the doctor ordered her not to be disturbed

*This point, which has been disputed, (Mr. Leigh Hunt making him a year younger), is decided by the proceedings in Chancery, on the administration of his effects, where he is said to have come age in October, 1816. Rawlings v. Jennings, June 3rd, 1825.

for some time, kept sentinel at her door for above three hours with an old sword he had picked up, and allowed no one to enter the room. At this time he was between four and five years old, and later he was sent, with his brothers, to Mr. Clarke's school at Enfield, which was then in high repute. Harrow had been at first proposed but was found to be too expensive.

A maternal uncle of the young Keats's had been an officer in Duncan's ship in the action off Camperdown and had distinguished himself there both by his signal bravery and by his peculiarly lofty stature, which made him a mark for the enemy's shot; the Dutch admiral said as much to him after the battle. This sailor-uncle was the ideal of the boys, and filled their imagination when they went to school with the notion of keeping up the family's reputation for courage. This was manifested in the elder brother by a passive manliness, but in John and Tom by the fiercest pugnacity. John was always fighting; he chose his favourites among his schoolfellows from those that fought the most readily and pertinaciously, nor were the brothers loth to exercise their mettle even on one another. This disposition, however, in all of them, seems to have been combined with much tenderness, and, in John, with a passionate sensibility, which exhibited itself in the strongest contrasts. Convulsions of laughter and of tears were equally frequent with

him, and he would pass from one to the other almost without an interval. He gave vent to his impulses with no regard for consequences; he violently attacked an usher who had boxed his brother's ears, and on the occasion of his mother's death, which occurred suddenly, in 1810, (though she had lingered for some years in a consumption,) he hid himself in a nook under the master's desk for several days, in a long agony of grief, and would take no consolation from master or from friend. The sense of humour, which almost universally accompanies a deep sensibility, and is perhaps but the reverse of the medal, abounded in him; from the first, he took infinite delight in any grotesque originality or novel prank of his companions, and, after the exhibition of physical courage, appeared to prize these above all other qualifications. His indifference to be thought well of as "a good boy," was as remarkable as his facility in getting through the daily tasks of the school, which never seemed to occupy his attention, but in which he was never behind the others. His skill in all manly exercises and the perfect generosity of his disposition, made him extremely popular: "he combined," writes one of his schoolfellows, a terrier-like resoluteness of character, with the most noble placability," and another mentions that his extraordinary energy, animation, and ability, impressed them all with a convic

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tion of his future greatness, "but rather in a military or some such active sphere of life, than in the peaceful arena of literature."* This impression was no doubt unconsciously aided by a rare vivacity of countenance and very beautiful features. His eyes, then, as ever, were large and sensitive, flashing with strong emotions or suffused with tender sympathies, and more distinctly reflected the varying impulses of his nature than when under the self-control of maturer years: his hair hung in thick brown ringlets round a head diminutive for the breadth of the shoulders below it, while the smallness of the lower limbs, which in later life marred the proportion of his person, was not then apparent, any more than the undue prominence of the lower lip, which afterwards gave his face too pugnacious a character to be entirely pleasing, but at that time only completed such an impression as the ancients had of Achilles,-joyous and glorious youth, everlastingly striving.

After remaining some time at school his intellectual ambition suddenly developed itself: he determined to carry off all the first prizes in literature, and he succeeded but the object was only obtained by a total sacrifice of his amusements and favourite exercises. Even on the half-holidays, when the school was all out at play, he remained at home translating his

* Mr. E. Holmes, author of the "Life of Mozart," &c.

Virgil or his Fenelon: it has frequently occurred to the master to force him out into the open air for his health, and then he would walk in the garden with a book in his hand. The quantity of translations on paper he made during the last two years of his stay at Enfield was surprising. The twelve books of the

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Eneid" were a portion of it, but he does not appear to have been familiar with much other and more difficult Latin poetry, nor to have even commenced learning the Greek language. Yet Tooke's "Pantheon," Spence's "Polymetis," and Lemprière's "Dictionary," were sufficient fully to introduce his imagination to the enchanted world of old mythology; with this, at once, he became intimately acquainted, and a natural consanguinity, so to say, of intellect, soon domesticated him with the ancient ideal life, so that his scanty scholarship supplied him with a clear perception of classic beauty, and led the way to that wonderful reconstruction of Grecian feeling and fancy, of which his mind became afterwards capable. He does not seem to have been a sedulous reader of other books, but "Robinson Crusoe" and Marmontel's "Incas of Peru" impressed him strongly, and he must have met with Shakspeare, for he told a schoolfellow considerably younger than himself, "that he thought no one could dare to read Macbeth' alone in a house, at two o'clock in the morning."