Epigrams
He became distinguished for his perfect mastery of the Latin language, and for the humour, felicity and point of his epigrams. His Latin epigrams, which have both sense and wit in a high degree, gained him much applause, and were translated into English, French, German, and Spanish.
John Owen had started writing epigrams while at Winchester – indeed, education there was largely devoted to the production of them – and his were good enough by the time he reached 16 years of age to be used in a ceremony held when Queen Elizabeth I paid a state visit to Sir Francis Drake on his ship at Deptford, on his return from sailing around the world.
John Owen started publishing his epigrams in 1606, whereupon they met with almost instant success throughout Europe, and the Continental scholars and wits of the day used to call him “the British Martial”.
Read more about this topic: John Owen (epigrammatist)
Famous quotes containing the word epigrams:
“Wha lies here?
I, Johnny Doo.
Hoo, Johnny, is that you?
Ay, man, but a’m dead noo.”
—Anonymous. “Johnny Doo,” from Geoffrey Grigson’s Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs, Faber & Faber (1977)
“If anybody comes to I,
I physics, bleeds, and sweats’em;
If, after that, they like to die,
Why, what care I, I lets ‘em.”
—Anonymous. “On Dr. Lettsom,” from Geoffrey Grigson’s Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs (1977)
“If true that notion, which but few contest,
That in the way of wit short things are best,
Then in good epigrams two virtues meet,
For ‘tis their glory to be short and sweet.”
—Anonymous. From A Collection of Epigrams (1727)