KEATS, John, English poet: b. London, 29 or 31 Oct. 1795; d. Rome, 23 Feb. 1821. He was the eldest child of Thomas Keats, employee and son-in-law of a livery-stable keeper named Jennings, and was born at the stable in Fins bury Pavement. There were four other chil dren, three of whom reached maturity, George, Thomas and Frances (Mrs. Llanos). In 1804, Thomas Keats, who like his wife, Frances, seems to have been a strong character, died from a fall from his horse. His widow soon remarried, but was speedily forced to leave her new husband and to reside with her mother at Edmonton, where she died, after a rapid de cline, in 1810.
Meanwhile the boys had been placed at Mr. John Clarke's school at Enfield, where John dis tinguished himself by his manly pugnaciousness and, later, by his zeal for literary studies, par ticularly mythology. He formed a friendship with the master's son, Charles Cowden Clarke (q.v.), an under teacher, who encouraged his hterary tastes; but unfortunately Keats' guard ian, in 1810, took him from school before he had begun Greek, and apprenticed him for five years to a surgeon at Edmonton.
He was still near enough to young Clarke to profit from the latter's influence, and Eliza bethan poetry, especially 'The Faerie Queene> awoke his poetic genius. His earliest known poem, 'Imitation of Spenser,' dates probably from 1813. The study of medicine became dis tasteful to him and a break with Hammond, the surgeon, followed in 1814. Keats went to Lon don, studied fitfully in the hospitals, and more and more gave himself up to reading and writ ing verse. The best of his early poems, the First Looking into Chapman's Homer,' seems to date from the summer of 1815, and was composed after a night of reading with Clarke. Besides this friend certain fellow students and his brothers formed Keats' chief society_ In the winter of 1816 Clarke intro duced him to Leigh Hunt (q.v.) whose influence upon him was at first very strong. Through Hunt Keats was led to widen his reading, es pecially in the direction of Italian poetry, and to develop an appreciation of the arts; but the elder poet also encouraged his new protégé's hsxuriant sentimentality and, through his own unpopularity, prepared the way for the critical hostility which Keats encountered as a member of the so-called "Cockney School?' The first of his poems to be printed was the sonnet. '0 Solitude,' which appeared in Hunt's Examiner for 5 May 1816. A little later. Keats, who had previously been appointed a dresser at Guy's Hospital, passed his examina tion as licentiate at Apothecaries'• Hall; but we hear more of literary plans and of acquaint ances, such as Shelley and John Hamilton nolds, than of preparations for practice. He was much at Hunt's cottage at Hampstead, he visited the sea shore, he wrote epistles in verse and prose to friends and relatives. By the winter of 1816-17 he had become intimate with the painter, Haydon (q.v.), had published sev eral sonnets in The Examiner, and had made up his mind definitely to abandon medicine for poetry. His first volume 'Poems by John
Keats,' with a dedication to Hunt, was pub lished early in March 1817.
The book, naturally, fell flat. Keats was still immature in thought and feeling, he had reacted too far from the pseudo-classical taste of the majority of readers toward the unre strained luxuriance of style of the later Eliza bethans, and he had submitted too unreservedly to the mawkish and shallow astheticism of Hunt. The.oung poet took his disappointment well and resolved to improve himself by study. In April 1817 he went alone to the Isle of Wight, then with his brother Tom he visited other places, and by midsummer he was domi ciled with both his brothers at Hampstead, where he saw much of literary and artistic friends, including Charles Wentworth Dilke, Charles Armitage Brown and the painter, Joseph Severn. More important for his poetical development, however, was the growing in fluence of Shakespeare and of the loftier, more spiritual portion of Wordsworth's verse, which may be seen in (Endymion.) This ambitious poem was begun on the Isle of Wight, steadily labored upon during the summer and fall despite distractions such as a visit to Oxford, and finished at the end of November 1817, at Burford Bridge, near Dorking. Keats spent the winter of 1817-18 in London, seeing (Endyinion' through the press, frequenting theatres, and having a rather gay time with his friends. Before was published'in April 1817, he had begun with Reynolds the ex periment of making mctncal versions of tales from Boccaccio, and in 'Isabella, or the Pot of Basil) he had given evidence, not only of maturing thought and of increasing control of his emotions, but of a manly faculty of self criticism that enabled him to perceive without flinching the faults that jostled the beauties of ( Endymi on. ) The last-named poem received a few favor able reviews, 'but made little impression on the public. Still fascinated with Greek mythology, Keats chose another subject from it, that of the fall of the Titans; but, before beginning he wisely resolved to study a more restrained model than his beloved exuberant Elizabethans — to wit, Milton. Meanwhile his brother George married and removed to Ken tucky, and Keats with Armitage Brown took a tour, partly on foot, through the Lake RegiOn and a portion of Scotland. Exposure and strain undermined Keats' health so much that a physician at Inverness had to order him home. He reached London in August 1818, where the sad task awaited him of nursing without hope his consumptive brother Tom thsough more than three months of decline. Just at this time an ironical fate decreed that the Quarterly and Blackwood's should publish their now notorious diatribes upon (Endymion> (by John Wilson Croker and, probably, J. G. Lockhart, respec tively). Keats on the whole bore the attacks well; but unfortunately Byron and Shelley have made the world think otherwise.