Note 5 — POEMS
Reading edition
'Will: Marshall sculpsit' implies that Marshall executed the plate from which the whole frontispiece is taken, including portrait and poem, not that he is responsible for the portrait itself. To judge from its shape the latter would seem to have been made originally from a medallion. Marshall, the Dictionary of National Biography says, 'floruit c. 1630,' so could have hardly executed a portrait of Donne in 1591. Mr. Laurence Binyon, of the Print Department of the British Museum, thinks that the original may have been by Nicholas Hilyard (see II. p. 134) whom Donne commends in The Storme. The Spanish motto suggests that Donne had already travelled.
The portrait does not form part of the preliminary matter, which consists of twelve pages exclusive of the portrait. It was an insertion and is not found in all the extant copies. The paper on which it is printed is a trifle smaller than the rest of the book.