He was a
most orderly scholar. The future ramifications of that noble genius were
then closely shut in the seed, and greedily drinking in the moisture
which made it afterwards burst forth so kindly into luxuriance and
beauty.
My father was in the habit, at each half-year's vacation, of bestowing
prizes upon those pupils who had performed the greatest quantity of
voluntary extra work; and such was Keats's indefatigable energy for the
last two or three successive half-years of his remaining at school,
that, upon each occasion, he took the first prize by a considerable
distance. He was at work before the first school-hour began, and that
was at seven o'clock; almost all the intervening times of recreation
were so devoted; and during the afternoon-holidays, when all were at
play, I have seen him in the school,--almost the only one,--at his Latin
or French translation; and so unconscious and regardless was he of the
consequences of this close and persevering application, that he never
would have taken the necessary exercise, had he not been sometimes
driven out by one of us for the purpose.
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