It is stated in _Endymion_ in lines that are worn bare with quotation.

It is stated again, at the height of his work in his greatest ode, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty: that is all We know on earth and all we need to know." His work has its defects; he died at twenty-six so it would be a miracle if it were not so.

He lacks taste and measure; he offends by an over-luxuriousness and sensuousness; he fails when he is concerned with flesh and blood; he is apt, as Mr.Robert Bridges has said, "to class women with roses and sweetmeats." But in his short life he attained with surprising rapidity and completeness to poetic maturity, and perhaps from no other poet could we find things to match his greatest--_Hyperion, Isabella_, the _Eve of St.Agnes_ and the _Odes_.
There remains a poet over whom opinion is more sharply divided than it is about any other writer in English.

In his day Lord Byron was the idol, not only of his countrymen, but of Europe.

Of all the poets of the time he was, if we except Scott, whose vogue he eclipsed, the only one whose work was universally known and popular.