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Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands By: Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901) |
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by Charlotte Mary Yonge
PREFACE. There are of course peculiar advantages as well as disadvantages in
endeavouring to write the life of one recently departed. On the one
hand, the remembrances connected with him are far fresher; his
contemporaries can he consulted, and much can be made matter of
certainty, for which a few years would have made it necessary to
trust to hearsay or probable conjecture. On the other, there is
necessarily much more reserve; nor are the results of the actions,
nor even their comparative importance, so clearly discernible as when
there has been time to ripen the fruit. These latter drawbacks are doubled when the subject of the biography
has passed away in comparatively early life: when the persons with
whom his life is chiefly interwoven are still in full activity; and
when he has only lived to sow his seed in many waters, and has barely
gathered any portion of his harvest. Thus what I have written of Bishop Patteson, far more what I have
copied of his letters, is necessarily only partial, although his
nearest relations and closest friends have most kindly permitted the
full use of all that could build up a complete idea of the man as he
was. Many letters relate to home and family matters, such as it
would be useless and impertinent to divulge; and yet it is necessary
to mention that these exist, because without them we might not know
how deep was the lonely man's interest and sympathy in all that
concerned his kindred and friends. Other letters only repeat the
narrative or the reflections given elsewhere; and of these, it has
seemed best only to print that which appeared to have the fullest or
the clearest expression. In general, the story is best told in
letters to the home party; while thoughts are generally best
expressed in the correspondence with Sir John Taylor Coleridge, to
whom the Nephew seems to have written with a kind of unconscious
carefulness of diction. There is as voluminous a correspondence with
the Brother, and letters to many Cousins; but as these either repeat
the same adventures or else are purely domestic, they have been
little brought forward, except where any gap occurred in the
correspondence which has formed the staple material. Letters upon the unhappy Maori war have been purposely omitted; and,
as far as possible, such criticisms on living personages as it seemed
fair towards the writer to omit. Criticisms upon their publications
are of course a different thing. My desire has been to give enough
expression of Bishop Patteson's opinions upon Church and State
affairs, to represent his manner of thinking, without transcribing
every detail of remarks, which were often made upon an imperfect
report, and were, in fact, only written down, instead of spoken and
forgotten, because correspondence served him instead of conversation. I think I have represented fairly, for I have done my best faithfully
to select passages giving his mind even where it does not coincide
completely with my own opinions; being quite convinced that not only
should a biographer never attempt either to twist or conceal the
sentiments of the subject, but that either to apologise for, or as it
were to argue with them, is vain in both senses of the word. The real disadvantage of the work is my own very slight personal
acquaintance with the externals of the man, and my ignorance of the
scenes in which the chief part of his life was passed. There are
those who would have been far more qualified in these respects than
myself, and, above all, in that full and sympathetic masculine grasp
of a man's powerful mind, which is necessarily denied to me. But
these fittest of all being withheld by causes which are too well
known to need mention, I could only endeavour to fulfil the work as
best I might; trusting that these unavoidable deficiencies may be
supplied, partly by Coleridge Patteson's own habit of writing
unreservedly, so that he speaks for himself, and partly by the very
full notes and records with which his friends have kindly supplied
me, portraying him from their point of view; so that I could really
trust that little more was needed than ordinary judgment in
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Philosophy |
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