"atheism" and vegetarianism.

When at fourteen the boy left Mr. Ready's school it was decided that his
further education should be carried on at home under private tutors. He
studied music under able masters, one in thorough-bass, and one in
execution. He played and sang, and he composed spirited settings for
songs. He read voraciously. He took lessons in dancing, riding, boxing,
and fencing, and is said to have shown himself exceptionally active and
vigorous. He kept up his interest in art, and he practiced drawing from
casts. He found time also for various friendships. For Miss Eliza and
Miss Sarah Flower, two sisters, nine and seven years his senior, he had
a deep affection. Both young ladies were gifted in music, and this was
one source of their attractions for the music-loving boy. Miss Sarah
Flower wrote sacred hymns, the best known of which is "Nearer my God to
Thee," and her sister composed music which Browning, even in his mature
years, ranked as of especial significance. Other friends of this period
were Joseph Arnold, afterwards Chief Justice of Bombay, and a man of
great ability; Alfred Domett, a striking and interesting personality
described by Browning in a poem beginning "What's Become of Waring," and
referred to in "The Guardian Angel"; and the three Silverthorne boys,
his cousins, the death of one of whom was the occasion of the poem "May
and Death."

In spite of friends, a beautiful home, and congenial work, this period
of home tutelage does not seem to have been altogether happy. His sister
in commenting on this period said, "The fact was, poor boy, he had
outgrown his social surroundings. They were absolutely good, but they
were narrow; it could not be otherwise; he chafed under them."
Furthermore, the youth, before he had found his real work as a poet, was
restless, irritable, and opinionated; and an ever-present cause of
friction was the fact that there were few subjects of taste on which he
and his father did not disagree. Their poetic tastes were especially at
variance. The father counted Pope supreme in poetry, and it was many
years before he could take pleasure in the form in which his son's
genius expressed itself. All the more noteworthy, then, is the
generosity with which Mr. Browning looked after his son's interests
through the unprofitable early years of his poetic career, a generosity
never lost sight of by the son. Mr. Sharp in his _Life of Browning_
records some words uttered by Mr. B