‘As I said above, it seems childish. But it is true. And this was the first prejudice.
‘The second prejudice was perhaps his youth. He was, it is true, past thirty, but he had only taken his degree three or four years, and therefore he only ought to have been five-and-twenty. He looked no more than five-and-twenty; he still possessed—he always possessed—the enthusiasm of youth; his manners, which could be, when he chose, full of dignity even among his intimates, were those of a man still in early manhood; he had been talked about in connection with his adventures in the East; and stories were told, some true and some false, which may have alarmed the gravity of the Heads. There must be no tincture of Bohemianism about a Professor of the University. Perhaps rumours may have been whispered about the gipsies and the tinkers, or the mesmerizing, or the conjuring; but I think the conjuring had hardly yet begun.
‘In speaking of this election, I beg most emphatically to disclaim any comparison between the most eminent and illustrious scholar who was elected and the man who was rejected. I say that it is always the bounden duty of the University to give her prizes to her own children if they have proved themselves worthy of them. Not to do so is to discourage learning and to drive away students. Now, the Professorship of Arabic was vacant; the most brilliant Oriental scholar whom the University has produced in this century—perhaps in any century—became a candidate for it; he was the only Cambridge man who could possibly be a candidate; the Heads of Houses passed him by and elected a scholar of wide reputation indeed, but not a member of the University.
‘There were other circumstances which made the election more disappointing. It was known, before the election, that Dr Wright had been spoken to on the subject; it was also known that he would not stand because the stipend of the post, only 300_l._ a year, was not sufficient to induce him to give up the British Museum. It seemed, therefore, that the result of Palmer’s candidature would be a walk over. But the day before the election the Master of Queens’—then Dr Phillips, who was himself a Syriac scholar—went round to all the electors, and informed them that Dr Wright would be put up on the following day. He was put up; he was elected; and very shortly afterwards was made a Fellow of Queens’ probably in consequence of an understanding with Dr Phillips that, in the event of his election to the Professorship, an election to a Queens’ Fellowship should follow. Of course, one has nothing to say against the Fellowship. Probably a Queens’ Fellowship was never more honourably and usefully bestowed; but yet the man who ought to have obtained the Professorship, the man to whom it belonged, was kept out of it. Palmer was the kindest-hearted and most forgiving of men, and the last to think or speak evil; but this was a deliberate and uncalled-for injustice, an insult to his reputation which could never be forgotten. It embittered the whole of his future connexion with the University: it never was forgotten or forgiven[96].’