Philip Numan

Philip Numan (born around 1550, died 19 February 1627) was a lawyer and humanist from the Low Countries, and a writer in prose and verse, sometimes under the pen name Hippophilus Neander.

[2] His account of the miracles attributed to the intercession of Our Lady of Scherpenheuvel was published in Dutch and French, and soon translated into Spanish and English.

[3] He translated a number of Latin and Spanish works into Dutch (and in one case into French).

When he was translating Diva Virgo Hallensis by Justus Lipsius, Lipsius wrote to him on 9 April 1605 that he should not translate too literally, but in his own natural style, because "each language has its own character and as it were its own genius, which cannot be conveyed in another language".

[4] In preliminary verses to Richard Verstegan's Neder-duytsche epigrammen (Mechelen, Henry Jaye, 1617) Numan wrote in praise of the "genius" of Dutch as a literary language.