Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Keswick, to William Godwin, 1800 December 6 : autograph manuscript signed.

Explaining an idea for a project: "The plan was this - a System of Geography taught by a re-writing of the most celebrated Travels into the different climates of the world, chusing for each climate one Traveller, but interspersing among his adventures all that was interesting in incident or observation from all former or after travellers or voyagers - annexing to each Travel a short Essay, pointing out what facts in it illustrate what laws of mind, &c &c. - If a Bookseller of Spirit would undertake this work, I have no doubt of it's becoming a standard School Book;" saying that it should be as long as William Guthrie's A New System of Modern Geography; adding that he mentions the idea to Godwin because he thinks it would suit him, but if he does not wish to pursue it, asking him to tell no one else, as Coleridge would then like to do it himself; advising Godwin strongly against writing a Life of Lord Bolingbroke, "unless you have many original unpublished papers &c;" disparaging Bolingbroke's philosophical writings; saying that if Godwin does happen to have original letters that would enable him to "explain the junction of intellectual power & depraved Appetites, for heaven's sake, go on boldly - & dedicate the work to your Friend [Richard Brinsley] Sheridan. For myself, I would rather have written the Mad Mother [referring to Wordsworth's poem], than all the works of all the Bolingbrokes & Sheridans, & their Brother Meteors, that have been exhaled from the Morasses of human depravity since the loss of Paradise. - But this, my contempt of their intellectual powers as worthless, does not prevent me from feeling an interest & curiosity in their moral Temperament;" reassuring Godwin about the upcoming premiere of his play Antonio and writing "the success of a Tragedy is in my humble opinion rather improbable than probable -. What Tragedy has succeeded for the last 15 years?"; adding "If every Wish of mine had but a pair of Hands, your Play should be clapped thro' 160 successive nights - and I would reconcile it to my conscience (in part) by two thoughts, first that you are a good man ; & secondly that the divinity of Shakespeare would remain all that while unblasphemed by the applauses of a Rabble, who if he were now for the first time to present his pieces would hiss them into infamy;" including a line in Greek and saying "The mass of Mankind are blind in heart, & I have been almost blind in my eyes;" explaining that his eyes have been inflamed for many weeks, that he has had rheumatism in his hand, and that "at present I have six excruciating Boils behind my right Ear, the largest of which I have christened Captain Robert, in honor of Defoe's Capt. Robert Boyle [a misattribution -- The Voyages of Captain R. Boyle was written by W.R. Chetwood];" saying that these afflictions explain "any thing fretful & splenetic in this Letter [...] only do not cease to believe that I am interested in all that relates to you & your Comforts;" sending news of Hartley and Derwent; asking in a postscript whether Godwin sees Charles Lamb often: "Talking of Tragedies, at every perusal my love & admiration of his Play [the tragedy John Woodvil] rises a peg;" adding "C[harles] Lloyd is settled at Ambleside - but I have not seen him. I have no wish to see him, & likewise no wish not to see him."