THOUGH I feel it to be really a privilege to be the instrument of
introducing to the public the life and correspondence of the most
intimate friend, especially of my early life, that I have ever possessed,
and of one of the truly excellent in the earth; yet, from an unfeigned
consciousness of my incompetency for the task, I would most willingly
have left it to other hands, and to other hands I offered it, and urged
upon them my earnest desire that they would undertake it; but from all I
received excuses as to themselves, and pressing invitations to myself to
engage in the work. They conceived that I might possess more materials
for the purpose than any other person; but they knew not the slenderness
of my capacity to prepare the memoir of one whose general character,
talents and excellences, merit a much abler pen than mine, to set them
forth with perspicuity and advantage.
His old friend and associate at Wellington, the Rev. John King, now
Incumbent of Christ Church, Hull, to whom I wrote on the subject, thus
addressed me:—“But independently of all considerations of this kind, I
believe you would be much better qualified than myself, or than any other
person I know, to do justice to the excellent yet peculiar character of
the departed. Let me beseech you, therefore, to arrange your
correspondence and materials with a view to publication.”
His excellent and much-loved sister, Mrs. Holland, wrote to me as
follows:—“The early, close, continued, and personal acquaintance you had
with my dear brother, constitute you, in my opinion, his most suitable
biographer.”
And his brother, the Rev. Thomas Mortimer, wrote to me in a similar
strain:—“On the very day that I received your letter, I was fully
intending to write to you, _entreating_ you _not_ to abandon your design
of writing a memoir of your dear departed friend, my beloved brother
George. _You_, above all persons I know, are the man to undertake that
work of love with any prospect of a successful issue. Your own
correspondence with him, through such a long series of years, would alone
furnish rich matter, I doubt not, for a biographer.”
Thus urged and encouraged, I was unwilling not to do my best: and if I
have proved myself but an unfit steed to draw such a chariot, the
friends, at least, of my dear departed friend must not forget that it was
they who put me into it; and this same consideration also will, I hope,
lead others to view the faults and imperfections of the work with
indulgence. Happily for me, the work is one rather of selection and
compilation than of original composition, and the life of my friend will
suffer less from the hand that draws it up, by reason of his speaking
chiefly for himself; his correspondence is, perhaps, his best memoir, and
this is the kind of life that it falls to my lot to prepare of him.
The attentive perusal of his letters for publication has most vividly
brought to my mind and remembrance the man whom, I can truly say, I loved
almost as my own soul; very delightful was our intercourse with one
another when associated together, very close was our intimacy, and warm
and stedfast our friendship: and the great point of union between us, the
connecting link in the chain of our connexion, was our common, and, I
trust, unfeigned faith in Christ crucified for the salvation of mankind.
We were neither of us originally destined for the service of the
sanctuary; but it pleased God, early in life, to call us to the knowledge
of himself, and to inspire us with an ardent desire to preach that gospel
to others, who had ourselves been made personally sensible of the
deliverance brought to the soul by it. Through God’s good providence
also it was that we were both led to the same retired and secluded
village of Chobham, in Surrey, where, under the instruction of the Rev.
Charles Jerram, then curate of the parish, but since successively vicar
of it, and Rector of Witney, Oxon, we received the finishing part of our
education preparatory to our college course; and up to the time of our
leaving the university, we were personally, as well as cordially, united,
in no ordinary bonds of friendship, few days passing without our meeting
together. From that time our personal intercourse may almost be said to
have ceased; he spent a week with me in my first curacy in Bedfordshire,
and I spent a week with him in Canada about two years before his death.
In the intervening long period, we did not meet, I think, more than once;
and that after promising one another a yearly exchange of visits, so
little dependence can be placed upon the events of time. The time is
coming, however, I trust, when our union will be again renewed, and
become as personal and as cordial as before, but infinitely more pure and
spiritual, and therefore more perfect and satisfactory—subject to no
painful fluctuation or interruptions, and coeval with eternity.
_Monte Video_, _January_, 1847.