



Produced by Sandra Laythorpe and Others








LIFE OF JOHN COLERIDGE PATTESON:

MISSIONARY BISHOP OF THE MELANESIAN ISLANDS


By Charlotte Mary Yonge



Transcriber's note: This Etext of the Life of John Coleridge Patteson:
Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands, by Charlotte Mary Yonge
was prepared by Sandra Laythorpe and others. More information about the
history of the Anglican Church may be found at Project Canterbury A web
page for Charlotte M Yonge may be found at www.menorot.com/cmyonge.htm.





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 connecting and selecting. Nor until the work is
less fresh from my hand will it be possible to judge whether I have
in any way been allowed to succeed in my earnest hope and endeavour to
bring the statue out of the block, and as it were to carve the figure of
the Saint for his niche among those who have given themselves soul and
body to God's Work.

It has been an almost solemn work of anxiety, as well as one of love.
May I only have succeeded in causing these letters and descriptions to
leave a true and definite impression of the man and of his example!

Let me here record my obligations for materials--I need hardly say to
the immediate family and relations--for,