Letter from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Keswick, to William Godwin, 1803 June 4 : autograph manuscript signed.

Saying that he trusts that Charles Lamb has told Godwin of how seriously ill he (Coleridge) has been; saying that he arrived in Keswick on Good Friday, caught influenza and has struggled ever since, "the disease still assuming new shapes & symptoms;" adding that he feels he owes Godwin this explanation "for I quitted Town with strong feelings of affectionate Esteem toward you, & a firm resolution to write to you within a short time after my arrival at my home;" writing that, while he was sick, he thought with particular regret of the time he had wasted; saying that he is now ready to go to press with a "work which I consider as introductory to a System, tho' to the public it will appear altogether a Thing by itself;" adding that the title is "Organum verè Organum, or an Instrument of practical Reasoning in the business of real Life;" describing in detail the different sections it would include and what they would cover in terms of the history of logic and philosophy, beginning with Aristotle and Plato and continuing on to more recent thinkers like Ramon Llull, Petrus Ramus, René Descartes, Francis Bacon and Etienne Bonnot de Condillac; outlining the intent of the work and its possible applications; describing how he imagines it being printed and asking for advice about selling the copyright and applying to various publishers, including Longman & Rees and Richard Phillips (who he calls "a pushing man"); adding "It is not my habit to go to work so seriously about matters of pecuniary business ; but my ill-health makes my Life more than ordinarily uncertain / & I have a wife, & 3 little ones. If your judgment led you to advise me to offer it to Phillips, would you take the trouble of talking with him on the subject? & give him your real opinion, whatever it may be, of the work, and of the powers of the Author;" discussing a future project he would like to undertake on the "omne scibile of human Nature - what we are, & how we become what we are;" asking after Godwin's wife and children and saying that his household has all been sick, though now they are well; mentioning that if Godwin finds that this letter smacks of "scholastic quiddity, you must attribute it to the infectious quality of the Folio, on which I am writing - namely Jo. Scotus Erigena de divisione Naturæ, the fore runner, by some centuries, of the Schoolmen;" laying out in a long postscript his thoughts about a proposed abridged edition of Abraham Tucker's The Light of Nature Pursued (Griggs identifies William Hazlitt as the editor) and the contributions he would be willing to make to it; saying that if Godwin would raise the idea of this project with various London publishers, he would be obliging both Coleridge and a "young man of profound Genius and original mind [i.e., Hazlitt], 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."