Professor at Cambridge, was certainly by far the best candidate. But
as ill-luck--I mean ill-luck for the Library--would have it, he had
given offence by a lecture at Dublin, in which he declared that the
people of Canaan were Semitic, and not, as stated in Genesis, the
children of Ham. No one doubts this now, and every new inscription has
confirmed it. Still a strong effort was made to represent Dr. Wright
as a most dangerous young man, and thus to prevent his appointment at
Oxford. The appointment was really in the hands of Dr. Bandinell; and
after I had frankly explained to him the motives of this mischievous
agitation against Dr. Wright, and assured him that he was a scholar
and by no means given to what was then called "free-handling of the
Old Testament," he promised me that he would appoint him and no one
else. However, poor man, he was urged and threatened and frightened,
and to my great surprise the appointment was given to some one else,
who at that time had given hardly any proofs of independent work as a
Semitic scholar, though he afterwards rendered very good and honest
service. I did not disguise my opinion of what had happened; and for
more than a year Dr. Bandinell never spoke to me nor I to him, though
we met almost daily at the library. At last the old man, evidently
feeling that he had been wrong, came to tell me that he was sorry for
what had happened, but that it was not his fault: after this, of
course, all was forgotten. Dr. Wright had a much more brilliant career
opened to him, first at the British Museum, and then as professor at
Cambridge, than he could possibly have had as sub-librarian at Oxford.
He always remained a scholar, and never dabbled in theology.

Some very heated correspondence passed at the time, and I remember
keeping the letters for a long while. They were curious as showing the
then state of theological opinion at Oxford; but I have evidently put
the correspondence away so carefully that nowhere can I find it now.
Let it be forgotten and forgiven.

Many, if not all, of the stories that I have written down in this
chapter may be legendary, and they naturally lose or gain as told by
different people. Who has not heard different versions of the story of
a well-known Canon of Christ Church in my early days, who, when rowing
on the river, saw a drowning man laying hold of his boat and nearly
upsetting it. "Providentially," he explained, "I had brought my
umbrella, and I had presenc