'THE BEST OF MY ITALIAN SKETCHES'

SYMONDS (JOHN ADDINGTON, 1840-1893, poet and essayist) AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT OF HIS ESSAY 'THE PALACE OF URBINO', MARKED BY THE PRINTER AND ADDRESSED TO SIR LESLIE STEPHEN, a charming account of his journey to and exploration of Urbino which ends: 'This interchange between dead memories & present life is the delight of travel'; with fairly extensive autograph deletions, revisions and insertions both in the text and in the margins throughout, compositors' names written in pencil with casting off marks in several places, signed J.A.S. at the end, with both his own and Sir Leslie Stephen's name and address (Davos) on the verso of the last leaf, 44 numbered leaves, written on one side only, some dustmarks and ink marks from the printer's fingers, guarded, modern cloth lettered in gilt, loose bookplate of Parke E. Simmons, large quarto, [1882]

'...when we reached the long steep hill which ascends to San Marino, the inevitable oxen were called out, & we toiled upwards leisurely through cornfields bright with red anemones & sweet narcissus. At this point pomegranate hedges replaced the May-thorns of the plain...whence there is a further ascent of seven hundred feet to the topmost hawk's nest or acropolis of the republic. These we climbed on foot, watching the view expand around us & beneath. Crags of limestone here break down abruptly to the rolling hills...Misty reaches of the Adriatic close the world to Eastward. Cesena, Rimini, Verucchio, & countless hill-set villages, each isolated on its tract of verdure conquered from the stern grey soil, define the points where Montefeltri wrestled with Malatesta in long bye-gone years. Around, are mostly mountain-flanks in wrinkles & gnarled convolutions like some giant's brain, furrowed by rivers crawling through dry wasteful beds of shingle. Interminable ranges of gaunt Apennines stretch, tier by tier, beyond; & over all this landscape, a grey-green mist of rising crops & new-fledged oak-trees lies like a veil upon the nakedness of Nature's ruins. Nothing in Europe conveys a more striking sense of geological antiquity...The dominant impression is one of melancholy...We turn instinctively to Leopardi's musings on man's destiny at war with unknown nature-forces & malignant rulers of the universe...'

While revealing that this essay was 'the work of three weak mornings', Symonds twice makes the point in letters to his friend Horatio Forbes Brown (later his biographer) that he judged it 'the best of my Italian sketches' and thought it right, therefore, that he should have received 20 guineas from the publishers: 'It is as though even Smith & Elder discerned its speciality'. 'The Palace of Urbino' was first published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1882 and subsequently in Italian Byways, 1883. (The Letters of John Addington Symonds, 3 volumes). His descriptions of Italy were one of the subjects for which Symonds was best-known, including his Renaissance in Italy.

Leslie Stephen was connected by marriage to Symonds and in 1882 was editor of the Cornhill. He was doubtless unaware, since he considered married homosexuals as blackguards, of Symonds's relation with Alpine guides (his description of his guide in this essay is intense -- 'handsome as an antique statue, with the refinement of a modern gentleman').

£2,000