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 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, he would be in the school--almost the only one--at his Latin or French translation; and so unconscious and regardless was he of the consequences of so close and persevering an application, that he never would have taken the necessary exercise had he not been sometimes driven out for the purpose by one of the masters....
One of the silver medals awarded to Keats as a school prize in these days exists in confirmation of this account and was lately in the market. Cowden Clarke continues:--
In the latter part of the time--perhaps eighteen months--that he remained at school, he occupied the hours during meals in reading. Thus, his _whole_ time was engrossed. He had a tolerably retentive memory, and the quantity that he read was surprising. He must in those last months have exhausted the school library, which consisted principally of abridgements of all the voyages and travels of any note; Mavor's collection, also his _Universal History_; Robertson's histories of Scotland, America, and Charles the Fifth; all Miss Edgeworth's productions, together with many other books equally well calculated for youth. The books, however, that were his constantly recurrent sources of attraction were Tooke's _Pantheon_, Lemprière's _Classical Dictionary_, which he appeared to _learn_, and Spence's _Polymetis_. This was the store whence he acquired his intimacy with the Greek mythology; here was he 'suckled in that creed outworn;' for his amount of classical attainment extended no farther than the _Æneid_, with which epic, indeed, he was so fascinated that before leaving school he had _voluntarily_ translated in writing a considerable portion....