When John Milton's publisher insisted on a portrait for his 1645 Poems, he hired the engraver William Marshall, whose frontispiece gave him an overly large nose, greasy hair and puckered lips. Milton had Marshall engrave beneath it a Greek verse saying the likeness was drawn by a rank beginner and a caricature by a good-for-nothing artist. Marshall knew no Greek, so the joke was aimed at readers who could read it. The Latin caption also claimed Milton was twenty-one, when the face looked much older. In the 1673 edition, Milton dropped the portrait but kept the insult as a poem titled On the Engraver of his Portrait. In a 1713 edition, another engraver copied the portrait and replaced Marshall's signature with his own, so the insult fell on him.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.