20. JOHN KEATS (+1795-1821+), one of our truest poets, was born in Moorfields, London, in the year 1795. He was educated at a private school at Enfield. His desire for the pleasures of the intellect and the imagination showed itself very early at school; and he spent many a half-holiday in writing translations from the Roman and the French poets. On leaving school, he was apprenticed to a surgeon at Edmonton-- the scene of one of John Gilpin’s adventures; but, in 1817, he gave up the practice of surgery, devoted himself entirely to poetry, and brought out his first volume. In 1818 appeared his +Endymion+. The ‘Quarterly Review’ handled it without mercy. Keats’s health gave way; the seeds of consumption were in his frame; and he was ordered to Italy in 1820, as the last chance of saving his life. But it was too late. The air of Italy could not restore him. He settled at Rome with his friend Severn; but, in spite of all the care, thought, devotion, and watching of his friend, he died in 1821, at the age of twenty-five. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome; and the inscription on his tomb, composed by himself, is, “_Here lies one whose name was writ in water_.” 21. His greatest poem is +Hyperion+, written, in blank verse, on the overthrow of the “early gods” of Greece. But he will most probably be best remembered by his marvellous odes, such as the +Ode to a Nightingale+, +Ode on a Grecian Urn+, +To Autumn+, and others. His style is clear, sensuous, and beautiful; and he has added to our literature lines that will always live. Such are the following:-- “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.” “Silent, upon a peak in Darien.” “Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken.” “Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn.”