BOOKS AS COMFORTERS OF THE SOUL.

TN a charming little poem in the Spectator of September 19th Mrs. Fuller Maitland, in answer to a sympathetic friend who had asked her whether she should bring her any books or comforts, asks, in reply, for a book whose pages will teach fortitude to bear the ills of life, which will quicken dead hope and bring comfort to the mind. It is a most natural

request. We have all asked for and yearned for such a book when illness of body or sorrow of mind have darkened life as with a cloud. What could be more precious than such a book ? You would have but to open its pages, and the world of trouble and vexation would recede and leave you raised, • comforted, and restrained,—the horror of great darkness no longer on the soul, the body no more racked by the longing for the power and vital force, departed perhaps never to return. Could happiness be thus secured at the booksellers', the world would be a very different place. We should have the key to the garden of delight always in our pockets. It would need but to turn the lock and be at peace. Alas ! Mrs. Puller Maitland wants too much from books. There is no such -book in all the world as that for which she asks. No such book was ever written, or ever will be written, as the book of her thought. We say this without forgetting the Bible or the priceless consolations it has brought to so many, and will bring again. But these consolations are not the consolations -conveyed by the literature of the Jews, but by the spirit of religion. God forbid that we should write as if the spirit of religion were unable to touch and refine to purer issues the miseries of mankind. But it is not of such religions conso- lation that we are speaking now. We are taking lower ground, and asking whether any ordinary and secular book can possibly supply the want described by Mrs. Fuller Mait- land. As we have said, it cannot. It is far above the function of mere literature to act such a part.

But though we must recognise the futility of books as comforters of souls, there are humbler though analogous functions which they can fulfil. It is, therefore, worth while to ask what books come nearest to doing the work desired. If fortitude cannot be taught by books, nor dead hope revived, at least the mind may for a little be distracted by literature. The real injuries to the soul are not cured by these remedies, but the imaginary injuries may be got rid of by such means, and to some extent the symptoms of the real evil may be alleviated by the joy of letters. Undoubtedly many men can and do find in novels an anodyne of the mind. The petty troubles and worries of life are forgotten in following the fortunes of Nigel, in watching the exploits of the Count of Monte Cristo, or in listening to the eloquence of Mr. Pecksniff, Mrs. Gamp, or Mr. Micawber. Others, again, and these perhaps are the wisest because the most successful, find it possible to divert the thoughts from unplea- sant and dangerous subjects—subjects of which we say, with Hamlet, "that way madness lies ! "—by the reading of some big and important book on some big and important subject. They kill depression by reading histories and memoirs, by learning how Athens rose or Rome fell, by inquiring into those inner secrets of the Court of Louis XIV. which St. Simon has preserved for us, or by tracing the daily life of the clerk to • the Admiralty who has given the closest record of a human being, or shall we say monkey, that the world has ever known. Other men, by voyaging in maps and books of travel, soothe and find vent for the restlessness that comes with the solitude of ill-health. They pass the "thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice" with the Arctic or Antarctic explorers, glide down the -great rivers of America in birch-bark canoes, or scale the Himalayas or the Andes. But it will be said these are merely devices to escape boredom. Can nothing be done for those who suffer the true malady of the soul, or whose wounds, got in the battle of life, are still green and smarting ?—is their no

special palliative to meet their case To some tempera- ments, no doubt, poetry of the right kind will bring help. 'There is a note in Wordsworth—the "healing voice" of Matthew Arnold's lines—which may for a time soothe and restrain the mind. The "Ode to Duty" and "The Happy Warrior" are inspired by a spirit so magnificent that though

they do not directly make any attempt to comfort and con- sole, they cannot but for the time raise the spirit that • comes in contact with them. Milton, again, by his reserve and dignity in sorrow, may quiet the mind. The great passage which closes the "Samson Agonistes," if only the suffering mind can be placed en rapport with it—though there, in truth, lies the whole difficulty—must prove like "the shadow of a rock in a thirsty land" :—

" Mermen. Come, come, no time for lamentation now,

Nor much more cause : Samson hath quit himself Like Samson, and heroic'lly bath finished A life heroic, on his enemies k'ully revenged ; hath left them years of mourning,

And lamentation to the sons of Caphtor Through all rhilistian bounds. To Israel Honour hath left and freedom, let but them Find courage to lay hold on this occasion; To himself and father's house eternal fame; And, which is best and happiest yet, all this With God not parted from him, as was feared, But favouring and assisting to the end. Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair, And what may quiet us in a death so noble.

. . . . . . . .

Chorus. All is best, though we oft doubt,

What th' unsearchable dispose Of Highest Wisdom brings about,

And ever best found in the close.

Oft he seems to hide his face, But unexpectedly returns, And to his faithful champion hath in place Bore witness gloriously ; whence Gaza mourns And all that band them to resist His uncontrollable intent : His servants he, with new acquist Of true experience from this great event, With peace and consolation hath dismissed, And calm of mind, all passion spent."

Shakespeare, strangely enough, will yield far less consolation than Wordsworth or Milton. His pages have in them the sum of life and all the glory and power of the world, but the spirit is too strong, too free, too wise if you will, too omni- potent, to be of much avail to those who need comfort. But

it would be far too gigantic a task for us to try to enumerate all the books that would do, or would not do, to answer in some faint and feeble degree Mrs. Fuller Maitland's require- ments. The doctor cannot prescribe at large, and he who would seek to advise must know the origin and the nature of the malady. Yet one book may be mentioned, since it has in it much that can soothe the imitative and less real sorrows of the heart. Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," a new edition of which, in three volumes, has just been added to Bohn'a Library by Messrs. George Bell, is a book which, if read rightly, that is, with a proper allowance for and toleration of its whimsies, pedantry, and discursiveness, may help those who are depressed in mind,—especially if that depression is more imaginary than real. Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," the only book which could get Dr. Johnson out of bed two hours earlier than usual, is as fall as it can hold of pedantic follies, and yet beneath it all is a current of genuine good sense and of genuine goodness of heart which is truly delightful. He was a. true man in spite of his musty folios, this moth-eaten Christ Church don.

But though, as we have said, books can be nothing but the merest palliatives, and can do nothing to permanently quicken dead hope or to build up fortitude as a sure defence, we do not wish to take up an attitude of mere pessimism. Mrs. Faller Maitland, in the second half of her poem, asks for a• form of comfort which is far more authentic than that of books. When she says—

"Bring me the comfort of a mind

That good in every ill can find; And of a heart that is content With its desire's relinquishment,"

she does not ask in vain ; for here we presume she means another mind and asks for human help. Heaven be thanked there are men and women who can by sympathy bring help to the afflicted and can cherish the orphans of the heart.

Mrs. Fuller Maitland is right also in the way she describes them. Those who bring the best comfort are those who see good in everything, and who are contented,—content even under the supreme trial of rendering up and relinquishing the heart's desire. He who has resigned all, and is yet content and able to see good in all things, is, indeed, capable of bringing comfort. He has reached that condition in which he under-

stands all, pardons all, and yet feels of no human action or no human being that it is purposeless or of no account. Such a mind can indeed bring comfort where books and aught else

must fail,—can by its own unselfishness draw down a blessing. He who best comforts the sorrowful is he who has passed through the furnace of sorrows "with unsinged hair."