The book is an acquisition of major importance to scholars for it brings the number of books known to have belonged to Keats to twenty-eight. It also emphasizes just how important classical culture was to the young poet, which is evident from the other books (including works by Roman historians) in his possession during his life. Measuring just 14 by 8 cm, it contains Keats’s signature and inscription, ‘His Book’, in the centre of a page which also contains a bookplate bearing a stag’s head and the motto ‘AD FONTES AQUARUM’, from the Latin Vulgate version of Psalm 42, meaning ‘Back to the Sources of Water’. This bookplate belonged to Charles B. Snepp; bibliophile, hymnologist and Vicar of St John’s, Perry Barr near Birmingham until his death in 1880. The other ex libris at the top of the page is not, in fact, a bookplate at all but comes from an exhibition ticket bearing the post-1837 Royal Arms. Scholars have authenticated the signature and inscription, written with a poor quality quill, and dated it to ca. 1810 when Keats was aged fifteen and about to leave school. Particularly useful in this process was comparing the signature to other known examples, especially Keats’s notebook from his medical student days, as well as his letters and literary manuscripts. The book could therefore have been a school prize or gift from his school master, which Keats used to help with his schoolboy composition exercises in Latin oratory, and he also received an edition of Ovid as a prize for his academic abilities. That this is an Italian book (published by Pietro Maria Marchetti, Brescia in 1601) makes it even more relevant to the collection in Rome, for writing in his schoolboy Italian copy of Tacitus might just have been the first time the young poet dreamed of coming to Italy.
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