The date of writing has been taken from the postmark. See the published edition of the correspondence, cited below, for additional information.
This collection, MA 1856, is comprised of 48 letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Joseph Henry Green and 2 autograph manuscripts, written between 1817 and 1834. See the collection-level record for more information (MA 1856.1-50).
This letter is from the Joanna Langlais Collection, a large collection of letters written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to various recipients. The collection has been divided into subsets, based primarily on Coleridge's addressees, and these sub-collections have been cataloged as MA 1848-1857.
Address panel with postmarks: "J.H. Green, Esqre / Surgeon / Lincoln's Inn Fields."
Saying that he has been "so pressed by the Bookseller, that I must begin with the Printer on Monday" and therefore will not be able to "enjoy our philosophical Conversation to morrow"; writing that after Wednesday he should have more time free, "for I have little more to do with the Friend than to fill up and give an effective Conclusion to the Essay on Methodology"; vowing that after this is done he will devote all his energy to getting down on paper his "system of constructive Philosophy"; adding that he is not sure what form most suits this project: "A novel or a romance seems better adapted to the analytical elucidation of a system so abstruse than to a synthetic, or far rather a genetic, e- and pro-duction of the same"; saying that the novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen by Novalis is not an encouraging example and agreeing with a critique of it by Green; writing that he hopes to get his system printed and further that he hopes Green and others are able to protect his literary legacy after his death from those who have slandered him: "As long as I scattered the stream of my power in order to flow into them by an hundred nameless rills, all was well -- When by their own misconduct I was removed from them, they have been the main, the efficient agents in choking up the fountain-source -- i.e. my ease of heart, and chance of competence. Little does that man know me, who supposes that the Hunts, Hazlitts, Jeffrayses, &c have ever inflicted one serious pang"; describing the form that he thinks he might use, combining dialogue and lecture, and what the different sections will cover; asking to borrow Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann's Geschichte der Philosophie from Green, two volumes at a time; sending his kind regard to Green's wife and mother, and recalling their "kind attentions to me, & still kinder Bearing with my Infirmities."