Perhaps the better part of his education was that of his hours at home.

He read widely in his father's excellent library.

The favourite books of his earliest years, Croxall's _Fables_ and Quarles's _Emblems_, were succeeded by others which made a substantial contribution to his mind.

A list given by Mrs Orr includes Walpole's _Letters_, Junius, Voltaire, and Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_.

The first book he ever bought with his own money was Macpherson's _Ossian_, and the first composition he committed to paper, written years before his purchase of the volume, was an imitation of Ossian, "whom," says Browning, "I had not read, but conceived, through two or three scraps in other books." His early feeling for art was nourished by visits to the Dulwich Gallery, to which he obtained an entrance when far under the age permitted by the rules; there he would sit for an hour before some chosen picture, and in later years he could recall the "wonderful Rembrandt of Jacob's vision," the Giorgione music-lesson, the "triumphant Murillo pictures," "such a Watteau," and "all the Poussins."[8] Among modern poets Byron at first with him held the chief place.