10 s. XL JAN. 9, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
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LONDON, SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1909.
CONTENTS. No. 263.
NOTES : John Owen the Epigrammatist, 21 Manor of Neyte, '22 Inscriptions in Jerusalem, 25 Baltimore and "Old Mortality" Patersons, 25 The Brill, Somers Town A Poem attributed to Bonefons Curious Heriots, 26.
QUERIES :" The Wooset" "Christmas pig" Lascar Jargon Nym and " Humour " " Proxegeand Senage " Mrs. Oliphant's ' Neighbours on the Green ' Pierrepoint's Refuge, St. James's Street, 27 ' Plato Redivivus ' Oarlick : Onions for purifying Water Isinglass used in Windows Coningsby : Ferby Edward Barnard George Prior, Watchmaker, 28 " Clasket "Authors Wanted Richard Thompson, Surgeon R.N. Village Names Feminine Cross at Higham-on-the-Hill Button Seaman, City Comptroller Thomas Haggerston Arnott Britten Chantrey and Oliver, Miniaturists, 29.
REPLIES : Phillis Wheatley and her Poems, 30 Speakers of the House of Commons The Tyburn, 31 The Curious House, Greenwich Authors of Quotations Wanted Hawkins Family and Arms Adrian Scrope, 32 "Comether" New Zealand Fossil Shells Ernisius : a Proper Name Philip Stubbs, 33 Edward Young, Author of 'Night Thoughts' "Waney" Timber, 34 Bandy Leg Walk Shoreditch Family The Guard Aloft, 35 41 Shibboleth "Charles Crocker, Poet, 36 Scottish -is and -es in Proper Names Lord Beaconsfleld and the Primrose, 37 E. F. Holt Gainsborough's Wife Isabella Lickbarrow ' Love a-la-Mode ' Roman Law, 38.
NOTES ON BOOKS : Lady Priestley's ' Story of a Life- time ' Reviews and Magazines.
Booksellers' Catalogues.
JOHN OWEN THE EPIGRAMMATIST.
IN his ' History of Warwick School ' Mr. A. F. Leach bestows several pages (124 seqq.) on the master whom he not unnaturally describes as " the most distinguished person who ever held that office," John Owen the epigrammatist. We are told that Owen was thirteen years of age in 1577, when he was given a scholarship at Winchester, so that he must have been born in 1564 or 1563.* His birth has usually been assigned to about 1560. It is of interest to learn that "" the education at Winchester was largely devoted to the production of Latin epigrams," and that Owen's head master during the last two years of his time at school, Hugh Lloyd, had himself been under the Latin epigrammatist Christopher John- son. One is surprised, however, to find Mr. Leach describing Archbishop Williams as Owen's uncle (p. 133), a statement in support of which no evidence is offered. The term cognatus, it is true, is applied by Owen both to Williams and to Williams's cousin Owen Gwyn, Master of St. John's College, Cambridge (see Ep. iii. 166, iv. 89, x. 45, and 10 S. ii. 146, where I showed that there was an error in the ' D.N.B.') ; but
Mr. Leach's inference is supported by the pedi-
i by Mr H. R. Hughes in Y Cymmrodor, xvi.
177, to which Mr. J. H. Davies has kindly directed
my attention.
gree
the^ Lord Keeper, whom Owen addresses
as " ingeniose iuvenis," was his " nephew's "
junior by eighteen years or so.
Some of Mr. Leach's remarks on Owen's epigrams call for correction or supplement. When quoting from Camden's ' Annals ' the lines written to honour Sir Francis Drake by Owen while still a scholar at Winchester, Mr. Leach omits to state that the lines which Camden gives (p. 327, ed. 1639) as two separate compositions appear in Owen (ii. 39) as a single epigram, the couplet " Plus ultra," &c., which precedes in Camden, being attached to the end of the quatrain. Further, the sixth line ;_ is quoted by Mr. Leach as
Atque polus de te discet uterque loqui So it appears in Owen, but Camden (loc. cit.) has
Sol nescit comitis non memor esse sui. Some discrepancy may be due to the fact that Mr. Leach cites from Gent's English translation of the ' Annales.'
Again, Mr. Leach says that Camden " quotes a number of them, headed by those of Owen." But besides the lines claimed by Owen, Camden gives only a single
1*1*1 *-" *
distich.
Mr. Leach writes that Queen Elizabeth's visit to Drake's ship at Deptford was in November, 1580. It was in April, 1581. The words " where its carkasse is yet to be seen," quoted from the third edition of Gent's translation as evidence, apparently, that the ship was there in 1685, are, after all, a translation of Camden's own words " ubi ejus cadaver adhuc cernitur." In mentioning Owen's famous lines, An Petrus fuerit Roniae, sub judice lis est
Simonem Romse nemo fuisse negat, it might have been added that a similar idea is found in an epigram of Euricius Cordus (i. 79, ed. 1517 ; i. 62, ed. 1520): Prima Simon Petrus fidei fundamina iecit
Christicolasque novus dux fuit inter oves. At superas postquam Petrus migravit in arces,
Hoc subiit solus niunus ubique Simon, Hei mihi, quam tenuis grex est pastore sub illo, Quam gracili rarum tergore vellus habet !
At 10 S. ix. 284 a close resemblance was pointed out between another epigram of Cordus and one of Owen. Such resemblances are not unfrequent in modern Latin verse, and may at times be no more than unde- signed coincidences, the same theme being common to more than one writer. Other epigrammatists were indebted in turn to Owen.*
- His closest imitator was H. Harder. See ' Deli-
tise Poetarum Danorum ' (1693), vol. ii.
