Ah, but Pepys wasn't satisfied with having books arranged from large to small (or vice versa), Jno. He required them all to
appear to be exactly the same height.
Quote:
"A peculiarity of Pepys's arrangement was that he wanted each book on each shelf to be the same height, and when any book was shorter than the others he had a wooden base made for it, the visible portion of which was rounded and covered in tooled leather to resemble the spine of the book which would sit on it"
Source:
http://historyofinformation.com/detail.php?entryid=2026
I wonder what he would have done if, after getting loads of wooden bases made for the smaller books, he then acquired a book which was bigger than any other in his collection? Would he have needed to give that book a shelf all to itself or would he have had to had new bases made for all the existing books on the shelf where he was to place it?