alone must account to a
large extent for that presumptuous pride, which led him to expect
perhaps more than his just share from life and from the world.

Lenau's aimlessness and instability were so extreme that they may
properly be counted a pathological trait. It is best illustrated by his
university career. In 1819 he went to Vienna to commence his studies.
Beginning with Philosophy, he soon transferred his interests to Law,
first Hungarian, then German; finding the study of Law entirely unsuited
to his tastes, he now declared his intention of pursuing once more a
philosophical course, with a view to an eventual professorship. But this
plan was frustrated by his grandmother, the upshot of it all being that
Lenau allowed himself to be persuaded to take up the study of
agriculture at Altenburg. But a few months sufficed to bring him back to
Vienna. Here his legal studies, which he had resumed and almost
completed, were interrupted by a severe affection of the throat which
developed into laryngitis and from which he never quite recovered. This
too, according to Dr. Sadger,[76] marks the neurasthenic, and often
constitutes a hereditary taint. Lenau thereupon shifted once more and
entered upon a medical course, this time not absolutely without
predilection. He did himself no small credit in his medical
examinations, but the death of his grandmother, just before his intended
graduation, provided a sufficient excuse for him to discontinue the
work, which was never again resumed or brought to a conclusion. But not
only in matters of such relative importance did Lenau exhibit this
vacillation. There was a spirit of restlessness in him which made it
impossible for him to remain long in the same place. Of this condition
no one was more fully aware than he himself. In one of his letters he
writes: "Gestern hat jemand berechnet, wieviel Poststunden ich in zwei
Monaten gefahren bin, und es ergab sich die kolossale Summe von 644, die
ich im Eilwagen unter bestaendiger Gemuetsbewegung gefahren bin."[77] That
this habit of almost incessant travel tended to aggravate his nervous
condition is a fair supposition, notwithstanding the fact that Dr. Karl
Weiler[78] skeptically asks "what about commercial travellers?" Lenau
himself complains frequently of the distressing effect of such journeys:
"Ein heftiger Kopfschmerz und grosse Muedigkeit waren die Folgen der von
Linz an unausgesetzten Reise im Eilwagen bei schlechtem Wetter und
abmueden