III. Some of these unfortunate men have given strangely precocious proofs of their genius. Tasso could speak when six months old, and knew Latin at the age of seven. Lenau, at a very early age, composed most touching sermons, and played the bagpipes and the violin with astonishing skill. Cardan at eight had apparitions and revelations of genius. Ampère was a mathematician at thirteen. Pascal, at ten, inspired by the noise made by a plate struck with a knife, worked out a theory of sound, and at fifteen composed his celebrated treatise on Conic Sections. Haller preached at four, and devoured books at five. IV. Many of them have been excessive in their abuse of narcotics, or of stimulants and intoxicants. Haller was in the habit of taking enormous doses of opium, and Rousseau was excessive in his use of coffee. Tasso was renowned as a drinker, as also the modern poets Kleist, Gérard de Nerval, Musset, Murger, Majláth, Praga, and Rovani, as well as the very original Chinese writer Li-Tai-Pô, who was inspired by alcohol, and died of it. Lenau also, in his latter years, was an immoderate consumer of wine, coffee, and tobacco. Baudelaire abused opium, tobacco, and wine. Cardan confessed himself an indefatigable drinker. Poe was a dipsomaniac; so was Hoffmann. V. Nearly all of these great men, moreover, showed anomalies of the reproductive functions. Tasso, who was guilty of exaggerated licentiousness in his youth, was rigidly chaste after his thirty-eighth year. On the other hand, Cardan, impotent in his youth, gave himself up to excess at thirty-five. Pascal, sensual in his early youth, afterwards believed even a mother’s kiss to be a crime. Rousseau was affected by hypospadias and spermatorrhœa, and, like Baudelaire, was subject to a sexual perversion. Newton and Charles XII., so far as is known, were absolutely continent. Lenau wrote, “I have the painful conviction that I am unsuitable for marriage.”[435] VI. Instead of preferring the quiet seclusion of the study, they cannot rest in any place, and have to be continually travelling. Lenau removed from Vienna to Stokerau, and then to Gmünden, and finally emigrated to America. “I need,” he said, “a change of climate every now and then to stir up my blood.”[436] Tasso was continually travelling from Ferrara to Urbino, Mantua, Naples, Paris, Bergamo, Rome, and Turin. Poe was the despair of his editors, because he was continually wandering about between Boston, New York, Richmond, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Giordano Bruno wandered to Padua, Oxford, Wittenberg, Magdeburg, Helmstädt, Prague, and Geneva. Rousseau, Cardan, Cellini were constantly staying now at Turin, now at Paris, now at Florence, Rome, Bologna, or Lausanne. “Change of place,” says Rousseau,[437] “is a necessity for me. In the fine season, I find it impossible to remain for more than two or three days in one place without suffering.”