From his earliest babyhood he seems to have lived in a more or less stimulating mental atmosphere; but as he emerged into youth he came under great poetic influences, which made his father's classical poetic tradition look for the time insipid.
Browning began to live in the life of his own age.
As a young man he attended classes at University College; beyond this there is little evidence that he was much in touch with intellectual circles outside that of his own family.

But the forces that were moving the literary world had long passed beyond the merely literary area.

About the time of Browning's boyhood a very subtle and profound change was beginning in the intellectual atmosphere of such homes as that of the Brownings.

In studying the careers of great men we tend constantly to forget that their youth was generally passed and their characters practically formed in a period long previous to their appearance in history.

We think of Milton, the Restoration Puritan, and forget that he grew up in the living shadow of Shakespeare and the full summer of the Elizabethan drama.