Henry Savile (Bible translator)

Sir Henry Savile (30 November , 1549 – 19 February, 1622) was an English scholar and mathematician, Warden of Merton College, Oxford, and Provost of Eton. He endowed the Savilian chairs of Astronomy and of Geometry at Oxford University, and was one of the scholars who translated the New Testament from Greek into English. He was a Member of the Parliament of England for Bossiney in Cornwall in 1589, and Dunwich in Suffolk in 1593.

Quotes

• The cause of undertaking a work of this kind was a good will in this scribling age not to do nothing, and a disproportion in the powers of my mind, nothing of mine owne invention being able to passe the censure of mine owne judgement, much less, I presumed, the judgement of others....
  If thy stomacke be so tender as thou canst not disgest Tacitus in his owne stile, thou art beholding to one who gives thee the same food, but with a pleasant and easie taste.
  • On his translation of four books of the Histories of Tacitus, with the learned Commentary on Roman Warfare (1591); quoted as epigraph in W. Hamilton Fyfe, Tacitus: The Histories (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912) vol. 1, front matter