Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/257

 MARSHALL, WILLIAM (fl. 1630–1650), the most prolific of the early English engravers, worked throughout the reign of Charles I. He confined himself entirely to the illustration of books, and the portraits and title-pages which he executed for Moseley and other booksellers are extremely numerous. Some of Marshall's plates are engraved with miniature-like delicacy and finish, and have a pleasing effect; but the majority, probably on account of the low rate of remuneration at which he was compelled to work, are coarse and unsatisfactory; the portraits in Fuller's 'Holy State,' 1642, are particularly poor. From the monotony in the style of his ornaments it is concluded that Marshall worked chiefly from his own designs. Among his many portraits, which are valued on account of their scarcity and historical interest, the best are those of John Donne at the age of eighteen (frontispiece to his 'Poems,' 1635); John Milton at the age of twenty-one, with some Greek lines by the poet, in which he sarcastically alludes to the elderly appearance which Marshall has given him ('Juvenile Poems,' 1645); Shakespeare ('Plays,' 1640); Francis Bacon ('Advancement of Learning,' 1640); Charles I on horseback; Sir Thomas Fairfax on horseback, after E. Bower, 1647; Archbishop Ussher; Nathaniel Bernard, S.T.P.; Charles Saltonstall ('Art of Navigation,' 1642); Sir Robert Stapylton (translation of Strada's 'De Bello Belgico,' 1650); Joannes Banfi; and Bathusa Making, governess to Princess Elizabeth. At the Sykes sale Marshall's portrait of William Alexander, earl of Stirling ('Recreation of the Muses,' 1637) fetched twenty guineas, and that of Margaret Smith, lady Herbert (the only impression known), twenty-five guineas. The title-page to Braithwait's 'Arcadian Princess,' 1635, is perhaps the best of his plates of that class, and the emblematical frontispiece to Εἰκών Βασιλικὴ, 1648, the most familiar.



MARSHALL, WILLIAM (1745–1818), agriculturist and philologist, was baptised on 28 July 1745 at Sinnington, in the North Riding of Yorkshire. He himself states that he was 'born a farmer, and that he could trace his blood through the veins of agriculturists for upwards of four hundred years,' but that, from the age of fifteen, he was 'trained to traffic, and wandered in the ways of commerce in a distant climate (the West Indies) for fourteen years;' but after 'a violent fit of illness' he returned to this country, and in 1774 undertook the management of a farm of three hundred acres near Croydon in Surrey. Here he wrote his first work entitled 'Minutes of Agriculture made on a Farm of three hundred acres of various soils near Croydon &hellip; published as a Sketch of the actual Business of a Farm,' London, 1778, 4to. Dr. Johnson, to whom the manuscript was submitted, disapproved of certain passages sanctioning work on Sunday in harvest-time (, Life of Johnson, ch. xxxix.) These passages were subsequently cancelled. In a note in the second edition of the 'Minutes' (1799, p. 70) Marshall says: 'That which was published, and is now offered again to the public, is, in effect, what Dr. Johnson approved; or let me put it in the most cautious terms, that of which Dr. Johnson did not disapprove.

In 1779 Marshall published 'Experiments and Observations concerning Agriculture and the Weather,' and in 1780 he was appointed agent in Norfolk on the landed estate of Sir Harbord Harbord. To the 'Philosophical Transactions' he contributed in 1783 'An Account of the Black Canker Caterpillar which destroys the Turnips in Norfolk.' This is quoted in Kirby and Spence's 'Entomology' (1st edit. i. 186) as the only authority for information on the subject. Marshall left Norfolk in 1784 and settled at Stafford, where he was busily occupied in arranging and printing his works. His 'Arbustum Americanum, the American Grove, or an Alphabetical Catalogue of Forest Trees and Shrubs, natives of the American United States,' appeared in 1785. From 1786 to 1808 he resided in Clement's Inn, London, during the winters, and travelled during the summers in the country.

His chief publication was 'A General Survey, from personal experience, observation, and enquiry, of the Rural Economy of England,' dividing the country into six agricultural departments. In 1787 the first two volumes appeared, dealing with the eastern division (exemplified in Norfolk); the northern (dealing with Yorkshire), followed in 2 vols, in 1788; the west central (treating of Gloucestershire) in 2 vols, in 1789; the midland (Leicestershire, &c.) in 2 vols, in 1790 (2nd edit. 1796); the western (Devonshire, Somerset, Dorset, and Cornwall), 2 vols. 1796; and the southern (Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire, 2 vols. 1798; to a second edit, of the last, 1799, the author prefixed a sketch of the 'Vale of London and an outline of its Rural Economy'). Most of these valuable works were collected by Paris in his ' Agri-