Author Description

John Keats was born (prematurely) on October 29th, or 31st, 1795, at his fathers livery stable, The Swan and Hoop, Finsbury Pavement. His father was Thomas Keats, head ostler to Mr. John Jennings, owner of the stables. Thomas Keats was a West-country man, who married Miss Jennings, the daughter of his employer, and John Keats was their eldest child. The father was killed by a fall from his horse, in 1804, leaving children, John, George, Tom, and Frances Mary. A year fater, Mrs. Keats married William Rawlings, stable-keeper, from whom she was soon separated, making her home with her widowed mother, Mrs. Jennings, at Edmonton. Though he was not born in distinguished place, Keats syouth did not suffer from lack of money. Mr. Jennings, his maternal grandfather, left over 13,000:he bequeathed to his widow capital yielding 200 a year, J50 a year to Keats smother, with reversion to her children by Thomas Keats, and 1,000 to be separately held in trust for the said children, and divided among them on coming of age. TJ nhappily, during Keats slifetime, certain funds to which he was entitled were overlooked by, or unknown to, him and his advisers. Keats, between 1806 and 1810, went to the school kept by Mr. Clarke, father of Charles Cowden Clarke, at Enfield, then a rural district. As a boy he was handsome, gay, pugnacious, but the death of his consumptive mother, in 1810, caused him a long agony of grief. Keats left school in the same year. His last years had been very industrious. He rendered the whole of the A ineid into English prose. Books of mythology were his delight, and he could divine the poetry of Greece in the prose of Lempriere. That a Greek dunce, to use the name given to Scott when a boy, would persist in writing on Greek subjects, was the frequent taunt of Keats scollege-bred critics. What education did not give, Nature supplied by congruity of genius(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)