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.