THE GOLDEN URN: No. II - 1. The Poetry of Milton, 2. The Poetry of Keats.

First edition, first printing. Copy with revisions in manuscript by Pearsall Smith. "Revised / No. II" written in ink to the front cover, and with numerous crossings out in pencil throughout. Inscribed in pencil on the rear endpaper: "From I Tatti, given me by Nicky Mariano, R.J.H. (?)". Villa I Tatti was the Berenson's Italian home, and the centre of their literary social circle, Nicky Mariano was I Tatti's librarian and one of the Berensons' closest confidants. Original paper wrappers with printed titles within a decorative urn device to the front cover. Page edges untrimmed. A very good copy, the binding square and firm with chipping to the spine ends, toning and minor marking to the covers and a little wear to the extremities. The contents with the aforementioned pencil markings are otherwise in good order and clean throughout.

The second issue of the short-lived literary and cultural periodical (of which only three issues were published between 1897 and 1898) created by Pearsall Smith and the Berensons. The first issue summarised its purpose thus: "The Golden Urn is published by certain people of leisure and curiosity, who thought it worth while to print for their own entertainment some impressions of art and life, some experiments in letters. Appreciation, untrammelled thought, scholarship, its editors will welcome; questions of aesthetics will be discussed. It will appear on unfixed dates and entirely at the pleasure of its editors; it is privately printed and will not be for sale, copies however will be sent - not without a feeling or, at least, an affectation of diffidence - to a few fastidious people." Pearsall Smith was its driving force, later describing it as "a pretentious little review" containing short extracts of what the three of them, in highly animated consultations, agreed were the "finest lines in Shakespeare, Milton, and Keats" (Samuels, Ernest, "Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Connoisseur"). In the following issue they treated art in much the same way, with Bernard and Mary providing a list of "the best, and only the best, Italian pictures in galleries and private collections". The present copy, providing a selection of lines from Milton and Keats, reveals the trio's ongoing debates regarding what should or should not be included, with cavalier crossings out galore. An interesting copy of a very scarce title, seldom appearing in commerce. Only two listed on Copac (BL & Oxford).