Yet the memory of these early doubts clung to him, principally, we may believe, because he had not force to purge them either by severe science or by vivid faith.

Later, when his mind was yielding to disorder, they returned in the form of torturing scruples and vain terrors, which his fervent but superficial pietism, his imaginative but sensuous religion, were unable to efface.

Meanwhile, with one part of his mind devoted to these problems, the larger and the livelier was occupied with poetry.

To law, the _Brod-Studium_ indicated by his position in the world, he only paid perfunctory attention.

The consequence was that before he had completed two years of residence in Padua, his first long poem, the _Rinaldo_, saw the light.