Featured on PDR in the collection John Milton’s Frontispiece Prank

When John Milton’s publisher insisted that he include a portrait in his first collection of poetry — Poems of Mr. John Milton (1645) — he called on the services of the prolific engraver William Marshall. Milton was thirty-seven and had that year begun losing his sight. He would however not be blind for another seven years and could see well enough that the resulting frontispiece was appalling. Comparison with other Milton portraits suggests that Marshall supplied the poet and polemicist with an overly large nose, extra greasy hair and puckered lips. Milton got his own back with an erudite joke. Underneath the frontispiece he had Marshall painstakingly engrave a scathing appraisal of it in a language he clearly could not understand, Greek: