IX. These morbid geniuses have a style peculiar to themselves--passionate, palpitating, vividly coloured--which distinguishes them from all other writers, perhaps because it could only arise under maniacal influences. So much so that all of them confess their inability to compose, or even to think, outside the moments of inspiration. Tasso wrote, in one of his letters, “I am unsuccessful, and find difficulty in everything, especially in composition.”[441] “My ideas,” Rousseau confesses, “are confused, slow in arising and developing themselves, nor can I express myself well except in moments of passion.” The eloquent and vivid exordiums of Cardan’s works, so different from the rest of his tedious books, show what a difference there was between the first and last moments of his inspiration. Haller, though a successful poet himself, used to say that the whole art of poetry consisted in its difficulty. Pascal began his 18th _Provincial Letter_ thirteen times. Perhaps it was this analogy in character and style that was the cause of Swift’s and Rousseau’s predilection for Tasso, and drew the severe Haller towards Swift; while Ampère was inspired by Rousseau’s eccentricities, and Baudelaire by those of Poe (whose works he translated) and of Hoffmann, whom he idolized.[442] X. Nearly all these great men were painfully preoccupied by religious doubts, raised by the intellect, and combated, as a crime, by the timid conscience and morbid emotions. Tasso was tormented by the fear of being a heretic. Ampère often said that doubts are the worst torture of man. Haller wrote in his journal, “My God! give me--oh! give me one drop of faith: my mind believes in Thee, but my heart refuses--this is my crime.” Lenau used to repeat, towards the end of his life, “In those hours when my heart is suffering, the idea of God passes away from me.” In fact, the real hero of his _Savonarola_ is Doubt,[443] as is now admitted by all critics. XI. All insane men of genius, moreover, are much preoccupied with their own _Ego_. They sometimes know and proclaim their own disease, and seem as though they wished, by confessing it, to get relief from its inexorable attacks.