_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." BALLIOLENSIS. [The personal and literary history of John Owen (_Audoenus_) 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, {496} caused by the bursting of his own pistol, owing to its having been incautiously overcharged? T. J. Worcester. [See the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for May, 1815, p. 395., for "A true and faithfull Narrative of the Death of Master Hambden, who was mortally wounded at Challgrove Fight, A.D. 1643, and on the 18th of June." From this narrative we learn, that whilst Hampden was fighting against Prince Rupert at Chalgrove Field, he was struck with two carbine-balls in the shoulder, which broke the bone, and terminated fatally.] * * * * * Replies. "PINECE WITH A STINK." (Vol. viii., pp. 270. 350.) I would not have meddled with this subject if R. G., getting on a wrong scent, had not arrived at the very extraordinary conclusion that Bramhall meant a "pinnace," and an "offensive composition well known to sailors!" The earliest notice that I have met with of the _pinece_ in an English work, is in the second part of the _Secrets of Maister Alexis of Piemont_, translated by W. Warde, Lond. 1568. There I find the following secrets--worth knowing, too, if effective: