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 opening a temporal artery; he was entirely successful in it, but the success appeared to himself like a miracle, the recurrence of which was not to be reckoned on.