How shall I commemorate, among the others, Sir Thomas Bodley, Otho Nicholson, and the Right Reverend John Williams, Lord Bishop of Lincoln? Besides his many other pious works, and the libraries at St John’s College, Cambridge, and at Westminster, he now also has a library at Lincoln in progress—a noble example for all incorporated towns and cities to follow. “How shall I commemorate you, most illustrious man, and with what praises?” But back to my task.

Whoever is overwhelmed by solitude, carried away by pleasurable melancholy and idle fancies, at a loss how to spend his time for lack of employment, or tormented by worldly cares—I can prescribe no better remedy for him than study: to settle himself to learning some art or science.

Always provided that his illness does not arise from excessive study: in that case he adds fuel to the fire, and nothing could be more harmful. Let him take care not to overstrain his mind and turn himself into a skeleton; or to become one of those lovesick readers who read nothing but plays, idle poems, jests, Amadis of Gaul, The Knight of the Sun, The Seven Champions, Palmerin de Oliva, Huon of Bordeaux, and the like. Such people often end up as mad as Don Quixote.

Study is prescribed only for those who are otherwise idle, troubled in mind, or swept away by empty thoughts and imaginings, to draw their thoughts elsewhere and turn their continual reflections in another direction—although a change of study, or a serious subject, would do the former readers no harm. Nothing is better than study in such a case: “Let them always learn something by heart,” says Piso. Let them memorize something, copy it out, translate it, and so forth.

Read the Scriptures. Hyperius, in book 1 of On the Daily Reading of Scripture, folio 77, holds this beneficial in itself: the mind is thereby lifted above all worldly cares and enjoys great peace and tranquillity. For, as Augustine aptly puts it, it is “the knowledge of knowledges, sweeter than any honey, more pleasing than any bread, more cheering than any wine.” It is the best nepenthe, the surest restorative, the sweetest medicine for changing one’s condition, an immediate diversion.

For, as Chrysostom aptly adds, branches and leaves woven together for cattle to stand beneath in the summer heat do not refresh them with their welcome shade as much as reading Scripture refreshes and comforts a distressed soul in sorrow and affliction.

Paul says, “Pray continually.” “What food does for the body, reading does for the soul,” says Seneca: reading is to the soul what food is to the body. Leisure without books is another hell, and burial alive.

Cardano calls a library medicine for the soul. Religious authors strengthen the mind, making people courageous and steadfast; and, as Hyperius adds, godly conversation will not allow the mind to be tormented by absurd thoughts. Rhazes prescribes continual conversation for such melancholy people: ongoing talk about some history, tale, poem, news, and the like. “To eat and drink one another’s talk is as pleasant as food or drink”: it nourishes the mind as food and drink nourish the body, and pleases it as much.

For this reason Rhazes, with good cause, would have someone always talk seriously or debate with them, and sometimes even quibble and argue—provided it does not erupt into violent agitation. Such disputation is like stirring a dying fire to make it burn afresh: it sharpens a sluggish mind and will not let it drown in those deep thoughts that commonly trouble melancholy people.

Ferdinand and Alfonso, kings of Aragon and Sicily, were both cured by reading history—one Curtius, the other Livy—when no prescribed medicine would work. Camerarius reports the same of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Pagan philosophers are so full of divine precepts of this kind that some believe they alone can calm a distressed mind.

“There are words and sayings by which to soothe this pain,” and so forth: Epictetus, Plutarch, and Seneca. “What a man he is! What weapons,” says Lipsius, “he supplies against every misfortune of the mind and against death itself! How he tears out vices and implants virtues!” When I read Seneca, I feel beyond all human fortunes, on a mountain summit above mortality.

Plutarch says as much of Homer. This is probably why, in Xenophon, Niceratus’s parents made him learn Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey by heart: “so that he might become a good man,” both to make him good and upright and to keep him from idleness. If philosophy can provide such comfort, what may we gain from theology? What will the religious meditations of Augustine, Cyprian, Gregory, and Bernard give us?

They tell us what is noble, what shameful, what useful, what not, More fully and better than Chrysippus and Crantor.

Indeed, what will Scripture itself give us? It is like an apothecary’s shop containing remedies for every illness of the mind: purgatives, restoratives, medicines that alter its condition, strengthening remedies, soothing remedies, and so forth. “Every disease of the soul,” says Augustine, “has its particular medicine in Scripture. All that is required is for the sick person to take the draught God has already prepared.”

Gregory calls it a mirror in which we may see all our infirmities; “speech tried by fire,” Psalm 119:140; Origen calls it a charm. And so Jerome directs Rusticus the monk continually to read Scripture and reflect on what he has read: for meditation is to what we read as chewing is to food.