recipient. It is
therefore to the last degree unfair to plump letters on the market
unselected and uncastigated. To what length the castigation should
proceed is of course matter for individual taste and judgment. Nothing
must be put in--that is clear; but as to what may or should be left out,
"there's the rub." Perhaps the best criterion, though it may be admitted
to be not very easy of application, is "Would the author, in publishing,
have left it out or not?" Sometimes this will pass very violent
expressions of opinion and even sentiments of doubtful morality and
wisdom. But that it should invariably exclude mere trivialities, faults
of taste, slovenlinesses of expression, etc., is at least the opinion of
the present writer. And a "safety razor" of such things might perhaps
with advantage have been used on Keats's, though he has written nothing
which is in the least discreditable to him.

V

NINETEENTH CENTURY LETTERS. LATER

[Sidenote: A NINETEENTH CENTURY GROUP]

Part at least of these general remarks has a very special relevance to
the rest of our story. There may be differences of respectable opinion
as to the system of editing just advocated; but they will hardly concern
one point--that the susceptibilities of living persons must be
considered. To some extent indeed this is a mere counsel of selfish
prudence: for an editor who neglects it may get himself into serious
difficulties. Even where such danger does not exist, or might perhaps be
disregarded, it is impossible for any decent person to run the risk of
needlessly offending others. It will be seen at once that this
introduces a new matter for consideration in regard to most--practically
all--of the correspondences which we have still to survey. Even those
just discussed have only recently passed from under its range. Shelley's
son died not so very long ago: grandchildren of Byron much more
recently; and if Keats had lived to the ordinary age of man and had, as
he very likely would have done, married not Fanny Brawne, but somebody
else later, a son or daughter of his (daughters are particularly and
sometimes inconveniently loyal to their deceased parents) might be alive
and flourishing now. As this constraint extends not merely to the
families of the writers but to those of persons mentioned by them (not
to speak of these persons themselves in the most recent cases), it
exercises, as will at once be seen, a most wide-ranging cramp and brake
upo