Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/130

 his salary was increased by 250l. by the university with the condition that he should deliver three concurrent courses of lectures, on Arabic, Persian, and Hindustani, each term, and reside at Cambridge for eighteen weeks in the year. To this incessant and very moderately paid work he added many other labours. He was one of the interpreters to the Shah of Persia during his visit to London in 1873, and wrote an account of it in Urdu for a Lucknow paper. He published a ‘Grammar of the Arabic Language’ (1874), which he afterwards reproduced in more than one modified form. He brought out a useful ‘Concise Dictionary of the Persian Language’ (1876; 2nd edit. 1884), of which the English-Persian counterpart was edited from his imperfect materials after his death by Mr. Guy Le Strange (1883).

Palmer's chief contributions to Arabic scholarship were ‘The Poetical Works of Behá-ed-din Zoheir of Egypt, with a Metrical English Translation, Notes, and Introduction’ (2 vols. 1876–7; the third volume, which should have contained the notes, was never published), and his translation of the Korân for the ‘Sacred Books of the East’ (vols. vi. and ix., ‘The Qurân,’ 1880). The former is the most finished of all his works, and is not only an admirable version of a typical Arabic writer of vers de société, but is the first instance of a translation of the entire works of any Arabic poet. Palmer's verse was good in itself, as he had shown in the little volume of translations from the Persian and original pieces published in 1877 under the title of ‘The Song of the Reed;’ and his translation of Zoheir, by a happy use of equivalent English metaphors and parallel metrical effects, represents the original with remarkable skill. His Korân is also a very striking performance. It is immature, hastily written, and defaced by oversights which time and care would have avoided; but it has the true Desert ring, a genuine oriental tone which is not found in the same degree in any other version. His ‘Arabic Grammar,’ like everything he did, took up new ground in Europe, though his method is familiar to the Arabs themselves. He was no born grammarian, and detested rules; but he could explain and illustrate the difficulties of Arabic inflexion, syntax, and prosody in a luminous manner, after the fashion of the Arabs, his masters. His other works were a brightly written little life of ‘Haroun Alraschid, Caliph of Bagdad’ (New Plutarch Series, 1881), full of characteristic anecdotes and verses from Arabic sources, but without any pretence to historical grasp or research; an ‘Arabic Manual,’ with exercises, &c. (1881), based upon his earlier grammar; a brief ‘Simplified Grammar of Hindustani, Persian, and Arabic’ (1882; 2nd edit. 1885), in one hundred pages; and two little books on Jewish history and geography, written for the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (1874).

Besides these, he revised Henry Martyn's Persian New Testament for the Bible Society; examined, in 1881–2, in Hindustani for the Civil Service Commission; assisted Eirikr Magnússon in translating Runeberg's ‘Lyrical Songs’ from the Finnish (1878); edited Pierce Butler's translation of Oehlenschläger's ‘Axel og Walborg’ from the Danish, with a memoir (1874); joined C. G. Leland and Miss Tuckey in producing ‘English Gipsy Songs in Romany, with Metrical English Translations’ (1875); edited Trübner's series of ‘Simplified Grammars;’ read verse translations from the Arabic to the Rabelais Club, which were printed in their ‘Recreations,’ and afterwards published in a series of papers on ‘Arab Humour’ in the ‘Temple Bar Magazine;’ wrote articles on ‘Hafiz’ and ‘Legerdemain’ for the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica;’ indited burlesques for Cambridge amateur actors, and helped to edit the ‘Eagle,’ a St. John's College magazine, and ‘Momus;’ and developed a marvellous talent in conjuring, which he exhibited in legerdemain entertainments for charitable objects. Originally with a view (soon abandoned) to Indian practice, he was called to the bar in 1874 at the Middle Temple, and even went on the eastern circuit for two or three years, taking briefs occasionally, but chiefly as an amusement and by way of studying humanity.

A man of so many talents and humours was scarcely in tune with university precision. The death of his wife, after a long illness, in 1878, unsettled him, and though he married again in the following year, Palmer grew tired of college life and lectures; he was drawn more and more towards London and away from Cambridge. In 1881 he threw up his lectures; retaining only the professorship, with its nominal salary, and entered a new phase of his career, as a journalist. He had already written for the ‘Saturday Review,’ the ‘Athenæum,’ and occasionally for the ‘Times.’ In addition to these, he now, at the age of forty-one, began regular journalism on the staff of the ‘Standard,’ where he acted as a useful and rapid, though not perhaps very powerful, leader-writer on social and general, but not political (unless eastern), topics, from August 1881 until his departure for Egypt on a secret-service mission on 30 June 1882.

So far as the purpose and origin of this mission are known, Palmer was sent by Mr.