Snt,—Professor Namier does not do justice to a very great
Englishman when he says that the prose of the Authorised Version of the Bible was the work of six committees revised by a general committee. To select only two of the many tributes to Tyndale's great influence upon the Authorised Version, the writer of the article on Tyndale in the D.N.B. says, "The translators of the Authorised Version not only retained the substance of his rendering where it was available, but adopted his style and method as their model throughout their work."
. The ,Rt. Hon. Isaac Foot concludes his Introduction to "The New Testament translated by William Tyndale," 1938, as follows: "On the four hundredth anniversary, of his death a writer in The Times Literary Supplement spoke of him as 'the man whose choice of words has for four hundred years exercised supreme influence upon English prose.' His words are daily on our lips, bis phrases have become part of our household speech, his cadences are treasured in every part of the world where the English language has gone. What other Englishman has touched so many lives?"
The late Dr. Blaikie considered that the Authorised Version retained about eighty per cent. of Tyndale's work in the Old Testament and ninety per cent. in the New. Some of the most important changes in language made in the Revised Version were not new but were reversions to Tyndale's translation. A specimen of the translators' own style is afforded by the turgid preface they wrote for the Authorised Version.-
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