Marshall's Ignorant Hand

The 1645 Poems opens with William Marshall's engraved portrait of John Milton which the poet hated so much that he penned a Greek epigram expressing his scathing criticism of it that Marshall also engraved beneath the portrait (see Figure 1). The standard explanation is that by composing it in Greek, Milton could exploit Marshall's ignorance of that language and have him unwittingly engrave a text that mocks his artistic skills. Penned in iambic trimeters—the meter of Greek invective poetry, a genre invented by the seventh-century BC iambic poet Archilochus (Rotstein 281-318)—Milton infuses his epigram with the acerbic, satirical spirit of Archilochus and Hipponax and taunts Marshall's artistic shortcoming: Ἀμαθεῖ γεγράφθαι χειρὶ τήνδε μὲν εἰκόνα Φαίης τάχ᾽ἄν, πρὸς εἶδος αὐτοφυὲς βλέπων· Τὸν δ᾽ἐκτυπωτὸν οὐκ ἐπιγνόντες, φίλοι, Γελᾶτε φαύλου δυσμίμημα ζωγράφου. This portrait is etched by an ignorant hand, You might say, if you look at the natural form. If you do not recognise the engraved person, friends, Then laugh at the dismal imitation by a careless artist. (Milton, Poetical Works 172; my translation)1 The first edition of Langbaine's Greek–Latin facing-page edition of Longinus published in Oxford in 1636 and "printed by William Turner, Printer to the University of Oxford, at the expense of William Webb, bookseller" (excud[it] G[uilielmus] T[urner] Academiæ Typographus impensis Guil[ielmus] Webb Biblio[polæ]) was a work of cutting-edge Hellenic scholarship in England. Boileau used it for his 1674 French translation of Longinus, as did Joseph Hall for his 1652 English translation, and Milton's reference to Longinus in Of Education (1644) remains among the earliest instances of an English author explicitly citing him (Spencer 137; CPW 2: 403). Thomas Vozar deems it likely that Milton possessed Langbaine's Longinus and that he may have used this specific edition in his teaching during the 1640s (49-52).2 This same edition also features an impressive engraving by William Marshall (see Figure 2) which has been praised for its conceptual and technical sophistication. Recently, Patrick Cheney describes how Marshall's engraving "emphasises the rhetorical power of On the Sublime" (28) and Philip Hardie similarly remarks that the centrality of "the idea of upwards flight in the Early Modern notion of the sublime may be seen from William Marshall's title page for the first edition (in parallel Greek and Latin) of Longinus" (10).3 Indeed, by being commissioned to produce this frontispiece, Marshall became one of the earliest artists to have access to Longinian theories of the sublime.4 Producing such a "conceptually rich" (Cheney 29) engraving for an avant-garde piece of Greek scholarship in England in 1636, Marshall enjoyed a reputation that Milton's covert attack on it in Greek less than a decade later would appear to need justification to merit the epithet 'ignorant' (Ἀμαθεῖ. l.1). It appears that Milton found it in Langbaine's 1636 edition. A close look at Marshall's frontispiece reveals an inscription inside the icon of a book. On the right-hand side appears his rendering Peri Hyphous (ὕφους) rather than, as it should be, Peri Hypsous (ὕψους) (see Figure 3).5 "Hyphous" (ὕφους) could mean "nets," "(spider) webs," "tissues," or "veils," thus accidentally changing the title of Longinus's treatise to something like On Nets rather than On the Sublime. Marshall's error does not feature in the 1636 edition's errata list, but it was corrected in the second edition of Langbaine's Longinus in 1638 where "hyphous" (ὕφους) is changed to "hypsous" (ὕψους) in the title page (see Figure 4 and Figure 5). Although the second edition of 1638 includes a new "index" (cum Indice) which is mentioned on its title page, it is also possible that the corrected title page of the second edition of 1638—or "the latest edition" (editio Postrema) as stated at the bottom—may have also served as a replacement or cancel for the faulty title page of the first edition of 1636.6 Milton may have discovered Marshall's error in the early or mid-1640s when he cited Longinus in Of Education or perhaps by using Langbaine's edition in his teaching of Greek to his nephews. Whether it was due to a careless accident or due to his shaky grasp of the Greek alphabet, Marshall's bungling of psi (ψ) with phi (φ) would have been noticed by Milton, the philologically-minded scholar whose eyesight had not been compromised by 1646, and whose advanced skills as a detector of Greek misprints, metrical infelicities, and variant readings are on display in his surviving annotated Greek books (Hale, "A Study of Milton's Greek"; Bourne and Scott-Warren 22–31). Moreover, there is evidence that other readers of the 1636 edition noticed Marshall's blunder. In one of the three copies housed in the University of Illinois's Rare Book and Manuscript Library, a reader has corrected Marshall's error, writing in ink the letter ψ over Marshall's engraved φ (see Figure 6 and Figure 7). With the connection between the frontispieces to Milton's 1645 Poems and the first edition of Langbaine's Longinus in mind, the language of Milton's Greek epigram can be read in the light of Longinian criticism. Milton condemns Marshall's engraving as a "dismal imitation" (δυσμιμήμα. l.4) of "the natural form" (εἰδὸς αὐτοφύες. l.2).7 Technically, Marshall's engraved portrait is a kind of sculpture; we find Marshall's signature below Milton's Greek epigram read "W.M. sculp[sit]." Milton's reference to his portrait as "ἐκτυπώτον" (l.3) refers to relief sculpture. This word is translated as "engraved" or "carved out" (exsculptum) by Rudolf Gwalther in his widely-used Latin translation of Julius Pollux's Onomasticon which Milton made frequent use of (Onomasticon 447; McDowell 145).8 The language of Milton's Greek epigram evokes concepts about poor artistry and specifically poor sculpture that Longinus elucidates in On the Sublime. In describing his own face that Marshall has so poorly imitated as "the natural form" or "nature's likeness" (εἶδος αὐτοφυές. l.2), Milton opens up a Longinian explanation for Marshall's faulty engraving. In the discussion of faults in sculpture, such as the "faulty Colossus" (ὁ κολοσσὸς ὁ ἡμαρτημένος. On the Sublime 36.3), Longinus argues that "we expect a statue to resemble a man" (κἀπὶ μὲν ἀνδριάντων ζητεῖται τὸ ὅμοιον ἀνθρώπῳ. On the Sublime 36.3). Milton's quip centers on Marshall's poor imitation of, not Milton's face per se, but more abstractly "of nature's form" (εἰδὸς αὐτοφύες) which, in turn, calls to mind Longinus's argument that sculpture must accurately imitate the natural form. According to Longinus, a "sculpture" (ἀνδριάς), that is, a statue of a "man" (ἀνήρ) specifically (rather than a statue of a god), must resemble the person whom it purports to represent because, while literature aims at superhuman sublimity, sculptures must aim to represent people accurately and according to their actual, natural appearance (Jonge 320-21). As Stephen Halliwell explains, Longinus's argument draws a "sharp contrast … between sculpture, with its need for lifelike representation of the human body (i.e., naturalistic 'likeness' or 'resemblance', τὸ ὅμοιον) and logos, where the greatest achievements should transcend the merely human" (385). It is the naturalistic likeness (or, in Milton's Greek, εἶδος αὐτοφυές) which Marshall has failed to represent accurately in his engraving. Marshall's earlier mistake in his engraving of Langbaine's Longinus would also allow Milton's epigram to function as a form of Longinian criticism of faulty sculpture. Narcissus nunc sum; quia te depingente nolui Cyclops esse; quia tu effigiem mei dissimillimam, præfixam poematibus vidisti. Ego verò si impulsu & ambitione Librarii, me imperito Sc[u]lptori, propterea quòd in urbe alius eo belli tempore non erat. (CW 9: 124) Now I am Narcissus because I did not wish to be a Cyclops, though you so depicted me, and because you have seen a picture totally unlike me "prefixed to my poems." But if, at the suggestion and solicitation of a bookseller, I suffered myself to be crudely engraved by an unskilful engraver because there was no other in the city at that time. (CPW 4: 750–51) the seemingly contrary claims and competing signals of Marshall's portrait and Milton's legend anticipate the grounds of contestation involving later prose works, particularly the three Defences, in which Milton as represented by others and then by himself is surrounded by a confusing range of contradicting images. For every action there is a reaction: whenever Milton is represented by another, he counters with a self-representation as if to say that he knows himself and in self-portraiture is better revealed than in representations by the William Marshalls of the world. (19) Milton's frontispiece instead offers learned readers a voice which is clearly established as his own before the poetry is even encountered, and which seems to extend through the volume offering explanation and judgement of the author's youthful verses in the same way that it offers judgment and explanation of the inadequate engraving on the frontispiece. (124) Undoubtedly to Milton's relief, Marshall's engraving was omitted from the second edition of Milton's Poems published in 1673. Milton refers to Marshall as a sculptor in the Latin title for the Greek epigram in the 1673 Poems: "In Effigiei Ejus Sculptorem." While this means that readers of the second edition have, as Stephen Dobranski says, "forfeited the sense of Milton peeking over his publisher's shoulder and encouraging us to laugh with him at the portrait that Moseley and Marshall had designed" (169), the Latin title added to the 1673 Poems amplifies the invective of Milton's ad hominem attack on Marshall. This is because there is a subtle ambivalence within the grammar of Milton's title which invites an antagonistic meaning. "In Effigiei Ejus Sculptorem" is almost universally referred to in editions of Milton's poetry as "On the Engraver of his Likeness" (Hughes) or "On the Engraver of his Portrait" (Revard; Carey), with "In sculptorem" being commonly understood as meaning "on," "about," or "concerning" Marshall. However, another perfectly valid translation of the title is "Against the Engraver of his Portrait." This is because "In sculptorem" could be read in two ways: either as "On the engraver" or "Against the engraver," where "In" can be read in the sense similar to Cicero's Speeches against Catiline (Orationes in Catilinam) or Milton's "Against Salmasius" ("In Salmasium"). This equally applicable and sound grammatical reading of the title "In Effigiei Ejus Sculptorem" would cast the poem's title as an ad hominem rebuke against Marshall rather than the more neutral, non-combatant tone of "On the Engraver of his Portrait." This alternative reading of the Greek epigram's later Latin title in the 1673 Poems would serve as another element in Milton's refiguration of the original collaboration between sitter and artist in the 1640s into the confrontation between republican and royalist from the 1650s onwards. As Dobranski explains, "as Secretary for Foreign Languages under the Commonwealth, Milton would have wanted to dissociate himself from the engraver who designed the frontispiece of Eikon Basilike and who was known for his portraits of Charles I and the Duke of Buckingham" (94). Although the motivation behind Milton's Greek epigram originally stemmed from his genuine displeasure with Marshall's portrait, his denigration of Marshall in the years following the publication of 1645 Poems repurposes the aesthetic conflict into the political context of his service when Milton later came to serve the Commonwealth government as Secretary for Foreign Tongues. The tension between Marshall's Latin inscription confidently declaring the image to be "the image of John Milton, Englishman, at 21 years old" (Ioannis Miltoni Angli Effigies Anno Ætatis Vigess: Pri:) and Milton's Greek epigram criticizing the accuracy of the engraving is reminiscent of the tension between another scholarly sitter's Greek quip concerning a different engraver's work.10 In Albrecht Dürer's engraved portrait of Erasmus (see Figure 8), we see Dürer's Latin inscription proclaim that this is "the image of Erasmus of Rotterdam crafted from a living representation by Albrecht Dürer" (IMAGO ERASMI ROTERODAMI AB ALBERTO DVRERO AD VIVAM EFFIGIEM DELINIATA). Below, Erasmus's Greek voice intrudes Dürer's inscription with the maxim: "his writings will show a better image" (ΤΗΝ ΚΡΕΙΤΤΩ ΤΑ ΣΥΓΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΑ ΔΕΙΞΕΙ). It is well-documented in Erasmus's correspondence from the 1520s that he was displeased with Dürer's engraving. As Peter Bietenolz observes, "unfortunately, it is perhaps the least successful of Dürer's engraved portraits … Erasmus was not satisfied with the likeness, for he complained about it to [Willibald] Pirckheimer in his letter of 30 July 1526 (Ep 1729) [and] later in a letter to Henri de Bottis of 29 March 1528 (Ep 1985) Erasmus again referred to this want of likeness in the print" (1: 414). In the letter to Pirckheimer, Erasmus wrote: "it is no wonder that this picture does not resemble my appearance" (si minus respondet effigies, mirum non est. 6: 371); and, in his letter to de Bottis, Erasmus is unambiguously critical of Dürer's engraving: "Dürer has completed his portrait of me, but there is no similarity" (pinxit me Durerius, sed nihil simile. 8: 367). Art historians have tended to agree with Erasmus in their verdict of Dürer's engraved portrait. Erwin Panofsky states: "so curiously impersonal is Dürer's engraving—whose Greek inscription, 'the better image will his writings show,' is truer than it was meant to be" (240). In his Greek epigram, Milton insists that only his learned "friends" (φίλοι) truly recognize who he is. This sentiment chimes with William Barker's reading of Erasmus's Greek maxim within Dürer's engraved portrait as essentially an invocation to the amicitia between humanist scholars belonging to the Republic of Letters because, even "though the portrait claimed to be drawn precisely to life, [it] cannot match the living presence of the written text … this 'living presence' of the written Erasmus is an essential part of the humanist programme, which depends on friendship and close alliances with others" (19).11 Erasmus's Greek voice jars with Dürer's Latin inscription in the engraved portrait and, similarly, as Elizabeth Skerpan-Wheeler observes, Milton's Greek epigram "intrudes into the engraver's space, asserting the primacy of the writer over the engraver" (107). Overall, Milton's sardonic and scholarly mockery of Marshall's "ignorant hand" (Ἀμαθεῖ … χειρὶ) has even more bite in it because the Greek epigram nods at a separate embarrassing case where the engraver compromised another engraving due to his ignorance of Greek. Not only did Marshall botch the title page of such a critical work of poetics and rhetoric, Longinus's On the Sublime—something which Milton alludes to by choosing to express his mockery of Marshall's ignorance specifically in Greek—but Marshall also botched the frontispiece of Milton's 1645 Poems by engraving such an inaccurate portrait. Seth Lerer observes that, for Milton, "being a scholar and being a poet in this world is really one and the same thing" (511) and, upon looking again at Marshall's portrait frontispiece of Milton, we see the scholar-poet donning his Cambridge MA gown and alluding to an embarrassing incident in contemporary Greek scholarship in his stinging Greek epigram.