He rose daily before daybreak to attack his books, and when the nights were long he went to morning school attended by a servant carrying torches.
[Footnote 5: 'Sentendo in me non so qual nuova insolita contentezza,' 'non so qual segreta divozione.' _Lettere_, vol.ii.p.

90.] Without seeking to press unduly on these circumstances, we may fairly assume that Torquato's character received a permanent impression from the fever of study and the premature pietism excited in him by the Jesuits in Naples.

His servile attitude toward speculative thought, that anxious dependence upon ecclesiastical authority, that scrupulous mistrust of his own mental faculties, that pretense of solving problems by accumulated citations instead of going to the root of the matter, whereby his philosophical writings are rendered nugatory, may with probability be traced to the mechanical and interested system of the Jesuits.

He was their pupil for three years, after which he joined his father in Rome.

There he seems to have passed at once into a healthier atmosphere.