Romantic emotion and passionateness were among his chief traits from the
start; but he was equally distinguished by a generous spirit, physical
vigor (though he was very short in build), and courage. His younger
brothers he loved intensely and fought fiercely. At boarding-school,
however, he turned from headstrong play to enthusiastic reading of Spenser
and other great English and Latin poets and of dictionaries of Greek and
Roman mythology and life. An orphan at fourteen, the mismanagement of his
guardians kept him always in financial difficulties, and he was taken from
school and apprenticed to a suburban surgeon. After five years of study and
hospital practice the call of poetry proved too strong, and he abandoned
his profession to revel in Spenser, Shakspere, and the Italian epic
authors. He now became an enthusiastic disciple of the literary and
political radical, Leigh Hunt, in whose home at Hampstead he spent much
time. Hunt was a great poetic stimulus to Keats, but he is largely
responsible for the flippant jauntiness and formlessness of Keats' earlier
poetry, and the connection brought on Keats from the outset the relentless
hostility of the literacy critics, who had dubbed Hunt and his friends 'The
Cockney [i.e., Vulgar] School of Poetry.'

Keats' first little volume of verse, published in 1817, when he was
twenty-one,-contained some delightful poems and clearly displayed most of
his chief tendencies. It was followed the next year by his longest poem,
'Endymion,' where he uses, one of the vaguely beautiful Greek myths as the
basis for the expression of his own delight in the glory of the world and
of youthful sensations. As a narrative the poem is wandering, almost
chaotic; that it is immature Keats himself frankly admitted in his preface;
but in luxuriant loveliness of sensuous imagination it is unsurpassed. Its
theme, and indeed the theme of all Keats' poetry, may be said to be found
in its famous first line--'A thing of beauty is a joy forever.' The
remaining three years of Keats' life were mostly tragic. 'Endymion' and its