CHAPTER XI.
_IMAGINATIVE REPRESENTATIONS_ All poems might be called "imaginative representations." But the class of poems in Browning's work to which I give that name stands apart.

It includes such poems as _Cleon, Caliban on Setebos, Fra Lippo Lippi_, the _Epistle of Karshish_, and they isolate themselves, not only in Browning's poetry, but in English poetry.

They have some resemblance in aim and method to the monologues of Tennyson, such as the _Northern Farmer_ or _Rizpah_, but their aim is much wider than Tennyson's, and their method far more elaborate and complex.
What do they represent?
To answer this is to define within what limits I give them the name of "imaginative representations." They are not only separate studies of individual men as they breathed and spoke; face, form, tricks of body recorded; intelligence, character, temper of mind, spiritual aspiration made clear--Tennyson did that; they are also studies of these individual men--Cleon, Karshish and the rest--as general types, representative images, of the age in which they lived; or of the school of art to which they belonged; or of the crisis in theology, religion, art, or the social movement which took place while the men they paint were alive, and which these men led, on formed, or followed.

That is their main element, and it defines them.
They are not dramatic.

Their action and ideas are confined to one person, and their circumstance and scenery to one time and place.