Mr. Henry
Stephens, who afterwards introduced creosote into medical practice, and
Mr. George Wilson Mackereth. Keats attended the usual lectures, and made
careful annotations in a book still preserved. Mr. Stephens relates that
Keats was fond of scribbling rhyme of a sort among professional notes,
especially those of a fellow-student, and he sometimes showed graver
verses to his associates. Finally, in July 1815, he passed the
examination at Apothecaries' Hall with considerable credit--more than
his familiars had counted upon; and in March 1816 he was appointed a
dresser at Guy's under Mr. Lucas. Cowden Clarke once inquired how far
Keats liked his studies at the hospital. The youth replied that he did
not relish anatomy: "The other day, for instance, during the lecture,
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."

Readers of Keats's poetry will have no difficulty in believing that,
ever since his first introduction into a professional life, surgery and
literature had claimed a divided allegiance from him. When at Edmonton
with Mr. Hammond, he kept up his connection with the Clarke family,
especially with Charles Cowden Clarke. He was perpetually borrowing
books; and at last, about the beginning of 1812 he asked for Spenser's
"Faery Queen," rather to the surprise of the family, who had no idea
that that particular book could be at all in his line. The effect,
however, was very noticeable. Keats walked to Enfield at least once a
week, for the purpose of talking over Spenser with Cowden Clarke. "He
ramped through the scenes of the romance," said Clarke, "like a young
horse turned into a spring meadow." A fine touch of description or of
imagery, or energetic epithets such as "the sea-shouldering whale,"
would light up his face with ecstasy. His leisure had already been given
to reading and translation, including the completion of his rendering of
the AEneid. A literary craving was now at fever-heat, and he took to
writing verses as well as reading them. Soon surgery and letters were to
conflict no longer--the latter obtaining, contrary to the liking of Mr.
Abbey, the absolute and permanent mastery. Keats indeed always denied
that he abandoned surgery for the express purpose of taking to poetry:
he alleged that his motive had been the dread of doing some mischief in
his surgical operations. His last operation consisted in o