You see the difficulty. If you arrange your books according to
their contents you are sure to get an untidy shelf. If you
arrange your books according to their size and colour you get an
effective wall, but the poetically inclined visitor may lose
sight of Beattie altogether. Before, then, we decide what to do
about it, we must ask ourselves that very awkward question, "Why
do we have books on our shelves at all?" It is a most
embarrassing question to answer.

Of course, you think that the proper answer (in your own case) is
an indignant protest that you bought them in order to read them,
and that yon put them on your shelves in order that you could
refer to them when necessary. A little reflection will show you
what a stupid answer that is. If you only want to read them, why
are some of them bound in morocco and half-calf and other
expensive coverings? Why did you buy a first edition when a
hundredth edition was so much cheaper? Why have you got half a
dozen copies of The Rubaiyat? What is the particular value of
this other book that you treasure it so carefully? Why, the fact
that its pages are uncut. If you cut the pages and read it, the
value would go.

So, then, your library is not just for reference. You know as
well as I do that it furnishes your room; that it furnishes it
more effectively than does paint or mahogany or china. Of course,
it is nice to have the books there, so that one can refer to them
when one wishes. One may be writing an article on sea-bathing,
for instance, and have come to the sentence which begins: "In the
well-remembered words of Coleridge, perhaps almost too familiar
to be quoted"--and then one may have to look them up. On these