I cherish all kinds of
honourable feelings towards you; and I am, dear Godwin,
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.
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