MS British Library: Coleridge Family Papers E: Add MSS 86206 Yonge JTC

My dear Sir John,
I perfectly enter into all you say in your kind letter, and it is just what I have felt myself about the inadequateness that there must be in fully dealing with such a matter.¹ I am quite resolved to use as much of the solid stone and as little of the native milk & water mortar as possible, and only to chip the stones as much as may be needed to make them fit together, using the language and as quotation – and this I hope may keep the portraits intact and manly. I found at Lichfield that the bishop would attend to all, narrate, and look carefully over notes of his words,- but I do not think he could be got to write anything consecutive, and Bishop Abraham gave me some exceedingly valuable notes, and explained and talked them over most kindly, but they are all scrappy, and I see that they will put more of themselves into it if I carry them a skeleton and let them correct and comment on it. I hope Sir William Martin may send something more full, as well as the Oxford friends and whatever I get I will do my best to keep as entire as fitting it into the chronology may allow. I think I am only trying to do what I am told, and so that I may be helped in what I feel to be a sacred work, and very much beyond me.

What I want to put into it is not my own words, but the mere literary facility of piecing, which is I suppose like a mason’s work.

I do intend to be very slow, indeed nature necessitates it, for I write slowly, and can do nothing well without much re writing – nor should I like to let copying be done by other hands, so that the work must be a long process, and I have put it in hand, meaning to do a little every day that is tolerably uninterrupted.

I suppose no one could occupy the ground without family authorization, but probably Macmillan will announce that I am doing it. It is not quite the fact that I never saw dear Coley for we all staid at Feniton once in 1848 or 9 and after he was at Alfington he dined one evening at Deerpark when we were staying with the Colbornes. Of course this is not real knowledge and if there were anyone nearer and better acquainted who had time and facility of composition I should be thoroughly ready to put it into better hands, but it does not seem to me that there is, and all I can try is to do as I am told, and keep the thread that strings the jewels as much out of sight as possible.

My love to May, and I will write as soon as I have got through the arrears of work
Your affectionate
C M Yonge

[written on top of first page] You do not know of a clergyman who would go abroad with Mr William Gibbs’s son Martin & read for Holy Orders with him. £200 a year & all expenses paid. Poor Martin cannot go on at Cambridge.