. John Keats; a literary biography ... icallectures. The troop of fairies, however, thatcame into the lecture-room in a sunbeam onemorning betrays the unprofessional imagination. Surgery should be an antidote for the poeticfrenzy; especially the old-fashioned had no anaesthetics, no antiseptics, noarterial forceps. They strapped a man to a table,gave him a bullet to clench in his teeth and lethim groan and flinch. Dissection is alwaysdeadening to the finer sensibilities. And dissec-tion, in Keats day, had gruesome preliminaries:the stealthy excursions of professor and studentsb
. John Keats; a literary biography ... icallectures. The troop of fairies, however, thatcame into the lecture-room in a sunbeam onemorning betrays the unprofessional imagination. Surgery should be an antidote for the poeticfrenzy; especially the old-fashioned had no anaesthetics, no antiseptics, noarterial forceps. They strapped a man to a table,gave him a bullet to clench in his teeth and lethim groan and flinch. Dissection is alwaysdeadening to the finer sensibilities. And dissec-tion, in Keats day, had gruesome preliminaries:the stealthy excursions of professor and studentsby night to exhume subjects from the PottersField. Jerry Cruncher or some other resurrec-tionist may have saved Keats this drastic ex-perience. But he could not have saved him thecontact with malformations, diseased organs andputrid flesh. The genius of a Monk Lewismight have thrived on such ugliness. To thefuture odist of the Grecian Urn it must surelyhave been a test for disenchantment. A dilettante would have been put to rout. The18. SURGERY fact that Keats, with his fine sensibihties, wentthrough this ordeal without shrinking is proofof stern fibre. And he went through to the July, 1815, — the echoes of Waterloo were inthe air, — he passed his examination at Apoth-ecaries Hall with honors and received an ap-pointment as dresser at Guys Hospital. He wasthus a full-fledged practitioner. There is an illuminating anecdote from Ste-phens, a roommate. It shows the undercurrentin Keats rising to the surface. Already he wasin jocular repute among his fellow-students fordabbling in verse. One evening the two weresitting in their room, Stephens at his medicalbook, Keats idling, dreaming. From the candle-makers shop below came intermittently thenoise of a customer. Suddenly Keats spoke inthe twilight: — *A thing of beauty is a constant joy. Whatdo you think of that, Stephens.^ It has the true ring, but it is wanting in someway. An interval of silence. * A thing of beauty i
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