[The supposition that Robert Burton committed suicide originated from a
statement found in Wood's _Athenae_, vol. ii. p. 653. (Bliss). Wood
says, "He, the said R. Burton, paid his last debt to nature in his
chamber in Christ Church, at or very near that time which he had some
years before foretold from the calculation of his own nativity; which,
being exact, several of the students did not forbear to whisper among
themselves that, rather than there should be a mistake in the
calculation, he sent up his soul to heaven through a slip about his
neck."]
_Joannes Audoenus._--I shall be obliged by any notices of the personal or
literary history of John Owen, the famous Latin epigrammatist, in addition
to those furnished by the _Athenae Oxonienses_. Wood remarks, that "whereas
he had made many epigrams on several people, so few were made on or written
to him. Among the few, one by Stradling, and another by Dunbar, a Scot," I
have met with one allusion to him among the epigrams of T. Bancroft, 4to.,
Lond. 1639, signat. A 3.:
"_To the Reader._
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 Audoenus, 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."