Arthur Palmer (scholar)
Arthur Palmer was a Canadian-Irish classical scholar.
Life
Born at Guelph, Ontario, Canada, on 14 September 1841, he was the sixth child of Arthur Palmer, archdeacon of Toronto, by his first wife, Hester Madeline Crawford. He was educated, first by his father, then at Guelph grammar school, under the Rev. Edward Stewart. After about four years there he left, in 1856.In 1857 Palmer went to Cheltenham College in England, where he remained less than a year; the headmaster at the time was Arthur Dobson. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1859, and was elected to its Scholarship in 1861. In 1863, he obtained a B.A. as Senior Moderator and Gold Medallist in classics, as well as a Junior Moderator and Silver Medallist in experimental and natural science. In 1867 he was elected a fellow, and was admitted to M.A., and in 1880 succeeded Robert Yelverton Tyrrell in the chair of Latin. In 1888 he succeeded Thomas Ebenezer Webb as public orator. He was Litt.D. of his own university, and honorary LL.D. of Glasgow and D.C.L. of Oxford.
From 1867 to 1880 Palmer was a college tutor, and for some years he captained a team of old university cricketers, the Stoics. During the last ten years of his life he suffered from bladder disease, dying of cancer on 14 December 1897.
Works
Palmer's contributions to classical scholarship were mainly emendations of Latin and Greek texts. His published works were:Heroides of Ovid, 1874; new edit,, 1898, Clarendon Press SeriesElegies of Propertius, 1880.Satires of Horace, London, 1883; 1893.Amphitruo of Plautus, 1888.Records of the Tercentenary Festival of the Dublin University, 1892.Catullus in Macmillan's Parnassus Library of Greek and Latin Texts, 1896.Palmer and Louis Claude Purser completed the editorial work for the final volumes of James Henry’s Aeneidea, a detailed commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid, after the death of John Fletcher Davies, the editor originally appointed by Henry’s trustees. Palmer also worked on Aristophanes, and contributed to the text of the editio princeps of Bacchylides, and first edition of Herondas. He also contributed articles to Hermathena, the Journal of Philology, Classical Review, and other periodicals.