Other poets, of course, have seen unknown lands and alien folks, but he has seen them more vividly, more briefly, more forcibly.
His imagination was objective enough.
But it was as subjective as it was objective.

He saw the soul of Fra Lippo Lippi and the soul of his time as vividly as he saw the streets of Florence at night, the watch, the laughing girls, and the palace of the Medici round the corner.

It was a remarkable combination, and it is by this combination of the subjective and objective imagination that he draws into some dim approach to Shakespeare; and nowhere closer than in these poems.
Again, not only the main character of each of these poems, but all the figures introduced (sometimes only in a single line) to fill up the background, are sketched with as true and vigorous a pencil as the main figure; are never out of place or harmony with the whole, and are justly subordinated.

The young men who stand round the Bishop's bed when he orders his tomb, the watchmen in _Fra Lippo Lippi_, the group of St.
John's disciples, are as alive, and as much in tune with the whole, as the servants and tenants of Justice Shallow.

Again, it is not only the lesser figures, but the scenery of these poems which is worth our study.
That also is closely fitted to the main subject.