His later work is notable not only for its beauty, but for its solidity of texture. He became an apprentice to a surgeon. Through his acquaintance with a family of cultivated people he became a reader of good books, and discovered his vocation when he opened the “Faerie Queene.” That poem did not make him a poet: it opened his eyes to the fact that he was a poet. “Endymion,” published when he was twenty-three years old, was immature in construction and diction; but it was the first bloom of a beautiful genius. “Hyperion,” which came near the end, is a fragment, for he was still very young in knowledge of life and the practice of art; but it has nobility and a certain largeness of handling that predict strength as well as art. The first line of “Endymion” showed where he stood as a poet, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” and on his deathbed he said, “I have loved the principle of beauty in all things.” He not only loved it, but gave it illustration in short poems of unsurpassed perfection. “The Eve of St. Agnes,” the “Ode to a Nightingale,” the “Ode to Autumn,” the “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” have a deathless loveliness and are stamped by that finality of shape which marks the best pieces of Greek sculpture. Matthew Arnold said of these shorter poems that they had “that rounded perfection and felicity of loveliness of which Shakespeare is the great master.” WILLIAM WORDSWORTH [Illustration: WORDSWORTH’S BIRTHPLACE IN THE LAKE REGION] [Illustration: WORDSWORTH’S MOTHER By Margaret Gillies.] While these poets died before maturity, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning had ample time in which to harvest all the fruits of their genius. Wordsworth’s life was in striking contrast to the lives of his brilliant contemporaries. Born before them, he lived twenty-seven years after the oldest of them died. Byron was an extensive traveler, Shelley lived five years in Italy, and Keats’ last months were spent in the same country. Byron died in Greece, Shelley was drowned in the Gulf of Spezia (spet´-see-eh), and Keats came to the end of his sufferings in the little room that looks out on the Spanish steps which are gay with flowers in the Roman spring. [Illustration: DOVE COTTAGE At Town End, Grasmere.] [Illustration: GRASMERE CHURCH]