Again, what is to be said about such part of a dead author’s writing as, having appeared in print, has afterwards passed through the author’s crucible of artistic revision? What about the executor’s duty here, where the case between the author and the public stands on a different footing? At the present time, when newspapers and novels alone are read, it is not the poet’s verses which most people read, but paragraphs about what the author and his wife and children “eat and drink and avoid”: a time when, if the poet’s verses are read at all, it is the accidents rather than the essentials of the work that seem primarily to concern the public. At such a time an editor is not entirely master of his actions. Doubtless, there is much reason in the wrath of Tennyson and other great poets against the “literary resurrection man,” who, though incapable of understanding the beauties of a beautiful work, can take a very great interest in poring over the various stages through which that work has passed on its way to perfection. These poets, however, are apt to forget that, after a poem or line has once passed into print, its final suppression is impossible. And perhaps there are other reasons why, in this matter, an editor should be allowed some indulgence. Here, for instance, is a puzzling case to be tried _in foro conscientiæ_. In the first edition of ‘Goblin Market,’ published in 1862, appeared three poems of more breadth of treatment than any of the others: ‘Cousin Kate,’ a ballad, ‘Sister Maude,’ a ballad, and ‘A Triad,’ a sonnet. In subsequent issues of the book these were all omitted. Mr. W. M. Rossetti, speaking of ‘Sister Maude,’ says: “I presume that my sister, with overstrained scrupulosity, considered its moral tone to be somewhat open to exception. In such a view I by no means agree, and I therefore reproduce it.” If Christina’s objection was valid when she raised it, it is, of course, valid now, when the beloved poet is in the “country beyond Orion,” and knows what sanctions are of man’s imagining, and what sanctions are more eternal than the movements of the stars.