Reader, till Martial thou hast well survey'd,
Or Owen's wit with Jonson's learning weighed,
Forbeare with thanklesse censure to accuse
My writ of errour, or condemne my Muse."
As translators of Audoënus, Wood mentions, in 1619, Joh. Vicars, usher of Christ's Hospital school, as having rendered some select epigrams, and Thomas Beck six hundred of Owen's, with other epigrams from Martial and More, under the title of Parnassi Puerperium, 8vo., Lond. 1659. In addition to these I find, in a catalogue of Lilly, King Street, Covent Garden, No. 4., 1844:
"Hayman, Robert. Certaine Epigrams out of the First Foure Bookes of the excellent Epigrammatist Master John Owen, translated into English at Harbor Grace in Bristol's Hope, anciently called Newfoundland, 4to., unbound; a rare poetical tract, 1628, 10s. 6d."
Balliolensis.
[The personal and literary history of John Owen (Audoënus) is given in the Biographia Britannica, vol. v., and in Chalmers' and Rose's Biographical Dictionaries.]
Hampden's Death.—Was the great patriot Hampden actually slain by the enemy on Chalgrove Field? or was his death, as some have asserted,
caused by the bursting of his own pistol, owing to its having been incautiously overcharged?