Yours most sincerely,
S. T. COLERIDGE.
[Footnote 1 Extant in MS. See 'Athenaeum', 26th October 1895.]
[Footnote 2: See the 'Friend', Bohn Library, pp. 319-345.]
You know the high character and present scarcity of 'Tuckers Light of Nature'. "I have found in this writer" (says Paley, in his preface to his 'Moral and Political Philosophy') "more original thinking and observation upon the several subjects he has taken in hand than in any other, not to say in all others put together". His talent also for illustration is unrivalled. But his thoughts are diffused through a long, various, and irregular work. And a friend of mine, every way calculated by his taste and private studies for such a work,[1] is willing to abridge and systematize that work from eight to two volumes—in the words of Paley, "to dispose into method, to collect into heads and articles, and to exhibit in more compact and tangible masses, what in that otherwise excellent performance is spread over too much surface." I would prefix to it an essay containing the whole substance of the first volume of Hartley; entirely defecated from all the corpuscular hypothesis, with more illustrations. I give my name to the essay. Likewise I will revise every sheet of the abridgment. I should think the character of the work, and the above quotations from so high an authority (with the present public, I mean) as Paley, would ensure its success. If you will read or transcribe, and send this to Mr. Phillips, or to any other publisher (Longman and Rees excepted) you would greatly oblige me; that is to say, my dear Godwin, you would essentially serve a young man of profound genius and original mind, who wishes to get his 'Sabine' subsistence by some employment from the booksellers, while he is employing the remainder of his time in nursing up his genius for the destiny which he believes appurtenant to it. "Qui cito facit, bis facit." Impose any task on me in return. [2]
[Footnote 1: Hazlitt. The abridgment was made, and published in 1807.]
[Footnote 2: Letter CXXXVII follows 119.]
Godwin published his 'Life of Chaucer' in 1803. The next letter refers to this work.
LETTER 120. TO GODWIN
Friday, July 10, 1803.