MS location unknown. Printed in Coleridge, Life, 302-303.
My dear Sir William-
I am always bothering you about something, and now I want to ask if you would give me a sentence. I want one describing the remarkable and peculiar merits collectively of the Bench of Judges in the Patteson and Coleridge days.1 I cannot well take it out of the mouth of a Coleridge and a judge, and I do not think I can do it rightly myself.2 I want to make as full a picture as possible of old Judge Patteson, for he ought to be remembered, and he went for very much in the formation of his son.
If you would put, as you would in a letter, your view of the high stamp of men who were judges from about 1830 to 1855, it would be what I want expressed. I do not know any one else whom I should like to see doing it but Sir Roundell Palmer, and I do not know him enough to ask.-
Your affectionate
C. M. YONGE.