his work. His heart, however, must have been elsewhere, for his enthusiasm for literature was unabated, and all the time he could spare from his daily routine he gave to reading and his labours on the "Eneid." He was fortunate enough to have a sympathetic and helpful companion in these studies of his leisure hours in his friend Cowden Clarke, who was still living at Enfield, an easy walking distance from Edmonton. The two youths met often, exchanged books, read together, compared notes and impressions, indulged, youth-like, in endless talk; and it was through this intimate relationship that a powerful new influence came into Keats's life. One afternoon, when he was visiting Enfield, Cowden Clarke read aloud to him that most beautiful of marriage-songs, the "Epithalamium" of Edmund Spenser, and in the evening, when he left, he lent him The Faerie Queene to take home with him. This was Keats's introduction to Spenser, who hitherto had been only a name to him, and it counts as an epoch in the development of his poetic powers. Through Spenser's world of romance

he ramped," says Clarke, “like a young horse turned into a spring meadow"; revelling in the beauty of the imagery; his face lighting up with sudden ecstasy when he came upon some strikingly felicitous phrase like "the seashouldering whales." He "hoisted himself up," Clarke tells us, recording the effect of this phrase upon him, "and looked burly and dominant as he said, 'What an image that is-sea

shouldering whales !'"' Another friend of later years, Charles Armitage Brown, states emphatically, on the authority of Keats himself, that it was the study of Spenser which inspired Keats to his own first experiments in poetry. "Though born to be a poet," writes Brown, "he was ignorant of his birthright until he had completed his eighteenth year. It was the 'Faerie Queene' that awakened his genius. In Spenser's fairyland he was enchanted, breathed in a new world, and became another being; till, enamoured of the stanza, he attempted to imitate it, and succeeded." Considering how large a body of work Keats was to produce in the few years that were allotted to him, it is curious that his creative energies should have lain so long dormant. Now at last they were stirred into activity by contact with the genius of that great master who has been called " $ the poet's poet." His "Imitation of Spenser " is not in any way a very remarkable poem, nor, in fact, is it very Spenserian in quality; but it gave to Keats a practical revelation of his own powers. He had loved the poetry of others. Now he discovered that he was himself a poet. This first effort of his, if only because it was his first effort, will therefore be read with interest by every one who cares for his work.

IMITATION OF SPENSER

Now Morning from her orient chamber came,
And her first footsteps touch'd a verdant hill:

Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame,
Silv'ring the untainted gushes of its rill;
Which, pure from mossy beds, did down distil,
And after parting beds of simple flowers,
By many streams a little lake did fill,

Ah

Which round its marge reflected woven bowers, And, in its middle space, a sky that never lowers. There the kingfisher saw his plumage bright, Vying with fish of brilliant dye below; Whose silken fins, and golden scales' light Cast upward, through the waves, a ruby glow: There saw the swan his neck of arched snow, And oar'd himself along with majesty ; Sparkled his jetty eyes; his feet did show Beneath the waves like Afric's ebony, And on his back a fay reclined voluptuously. could I tell the wonders of an isle That in that fairest lake had placed been, I could e'en Dido of her grief beguile ; Or rob from aged Lear his bitter teen : For sure so fair a place was never seen, Of all that ever charm'd romantic eye : It seem'd an emerald in the silver sheen Of the bright waters; or as when on high, Through clouds of fleecy white, laughs the cærulean sky. And all around it dipp'd luxuriously Slopings of verdure through the glossy tide, Which, as it were in gentle amity, Rippled delighted up the flowery side; As if to glean the ruddy tears, it tried, Which fell profusely from the rose-tree stem! Haply it was the workings of its pride, In strife to throw upon the shore a gem Outvying all the buds in Flora's diadem.

We may note in passing that Keats afterwards used the Spenserian stanza with wonderful effectin his beautiful romantic poem, "The Eve of St. Agnes."

S

II

COME time in the summer or autumn of 1814, the misunderstandings which from some now unknown cause had meanwhile arisen between Keats and Mr. Hammond came to a head, and though the apprenticeship had still a year to run, the latter allowed the indentures to be cancelled. Keats, now nearly nineteen, thereupon removed to London for the purpose of continuing his professional studies at St. Thomas's and Guy's Hospitals. He attended the lectures and worked steadily through the usual routine of the medical student, presently passing with credit his examination at Apothecaries' Hall. In March 1816 he was appointed dresser at Guy's, and thus took his first definite step in the profession of surgery. But by this time his mind had become more and more preoccupied with other interests. "The other day, during a lecture," he once, while still a student, told Cowden Clarke, "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 fairyland." Such quick and vagrant fancies, carrying the dreamer away into the realms of poetic enchantment, were, as he was perfectly well aware, dangerous companions in scientific pursuits:

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and as the months went on, his unfitness for his vocation became increasingly clear to him. "My last operation," he afterwards told Charles Brown, "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." Such an experience convinced him that he could never give to surgery that concentration of mind and whole-hearted devotion which it demands; and he added, "I never took up the lancet again.” His poetic genius was now fully awakened; its call was imperative. His verses, passed round in manuscript among his friends, began to gain their warm approbation; and thus encouraged, and stimulated by fast-growing confidence in his own powers, he determined, about the time when he came of age, to abandon surgery and give himself up entirely to literature.

Before this, Cowden Clarke had left his home to settle in London, and the pleasant associations of the old Enfield days were renewed. Once more it was Clarke's happy fortune to be of signal service to his friend in the opening up of hitherto unexplored regions of poetry. It was he who, as we have seen, had introduced Keats to Spenser. It was through him that he now became acquainted with Homer, who, as Lord Houghton says, "had as yet been to him a name of solemn significance, and nothing more." One day Clarke borrowed a folio copy of Chapman's translation of the Iliad and the "Odyssey," and carried it in triumph to Keats's