Not that it Matters | Page 5

way, but Beattie was quite right to remind us that Edwin didn't

either. Edwin was the name of the shepherd- swain. "And yet poor
Edwin was no vulgar boy," we are told a little further on in a line that
should live. Well, having satisfied you that Beattie was really a poet, I
can now return to my argument that an eleven-inch Byron cannot stand
next to a four-inch Beattie, and be followed by an eight-inch Cowper,
without making the shelf look silly. Yet how can I discard Beattie--
Beattie who wrote:--
"And now the downy cheek and deepened voice Gave dignity to
Edwin's blooming prime."
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 occasions a library is not only ornamental but
useful. But do not let us be ashamed that we find it ornamental. Indeed,
the more I survey it, the more I feel that my library is sufficiently

ornamental as it stands. Any reassembling of the books might spoil the
colour-scheme. Baedeker's Switzerland and Villette are both in red, a
colour which is neatly caught up again, after an interlude in blue, by a
volume of Browning and Jevons' Elementary Logic. We had a woman
here only yesterday who said, "How pretty your books look," and I am
inclined to think that that is good enough. There is a careless rapture
about them which I should lose if I started to arrange them
methodically.
But perhaps I might risk this to the extent of getting all their heads the
same way up. Yes, on one of these fine days (or wet nights) I shall take
my library seriously in hand. There are still one or two books which are
the wrong way round. I shall put them the right way round.

The Chase

The fact, as revealed in a recent lawsuit, that there is a gentleman in
this country who spends œ10,000 a year upon his butterfly collection
would have disturbed me more in the early nineties than it does to-day.
I can bear it calmly now, but twenty-five years ago the knowledge
would have spoilt my pride in my own collection, upon which I was
already spending the best part of threepence a week pocket-money.
Perhaps, though, I should have consoled myself with the thought that I
was the truer enthusiast of the two; for when my rival hears of a rare
butterfly in Brazil, he sends a man out to Brazil to capture it, whereas I,
when I heard that there was a Clouded Yellow in the garden, took good
care that nobody but myself encompassed its death. Our aims also were
different. I purposely left Brazil out of it.
Whether butterfly-hunting is good or bad for the character I cannot
undertake to decide. No doubt it can be justified as clearly as fox-
hunting. If the fox eats chickens, the butterfly's child eats vegetables; if
fox-hunting improves the breed of horses, butterfly-hunting improves
the health of boys. But