But the chief knowledge he had, through his curious reading, was of a multitude of small intimate details of the customs, clothing, architecture, dress, popular talk and scenery of the towns and country of Italy from the thirteenth century up to modern times.

To every one of these details--such as are found in _Sordello_, in _Fra Lippo Lippi_, in the _Bishop orders his Tomb at St.Praxed's Church_--his vivid and grasping imagination gave an uncommon reality.
But even without great knowledge such poems may be written, if the poet have imagination, and the power to execute in metrical words what has been imagined.

_Theology in the Island_ and the prologue to a _Death in the Desert_ are examples of this.

Browning knew nothing of that island in the undiscovered seas where Prosper dwelt, but he made all the scenery of it and all its animal life, and he re-created Caliban.

He had never seen the cave in the desert where he placed John to die, nor the sweep of rocky hills and sand around it, nor the Bactrian waiting with the camels.