Born, at Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, 28 Sept. 1824. At Charterhouse, 1838–43. Matric. Balliol Coll., Oxford, 1 Dec. 1842; Scholar, 1842–47; Fellow of Exeter Coll., 1847–62; B.A., 1851; M.A., 1856. Vice-Principal of Training Coll. for Schoolmasters, Kneller Hall, 1850–55. Assistant-Sec., Education Dept., Privy Council, 1855. Private Sec. to Earl Granville, 1858–64; Hon. LL.D., Edinburgh, 23 April 1878. Prof. of Poetry at Oxford, 1885–95. Works: “Preciosa” (anon.), 1852; “Idyls and Songs,” 1854; “The Works of Alfred de Musset” [a review], 1855; “The Passionate Pilgrim” (under pseud. “Henry J. Thurstan”), 1858; “The Golden Treasury” 1861; “Descriptive Hand-Book to the Fine Art Collection of the International Exhibition,” 1862; “Essays on Art,” 1866; “Hymns,” 1867; “The Five Days’ Entertainments at Wentworth Grange,” 1868; Text to “Gems of English Art,” 1869; “Lyrical Poems,” 1871; “A Lyme Garland” [1874]; “The Children’s Treasury of English Song,” 1875; “The Visions of England” (2 parts), 1880–81; “The Life of … Jesus Christ, illustrated from the Italian Painters,” 1885; “Ode for the 21st of June,” 1887; “The Treasury of Sacred Song,” 1889; “Amenophis, and other Poems,” 1892; “Prothalamion,” 1893; “Golden Treasury: book second,” 1896; “Landscape in Poetry,” 1897. He has edited: Clough’s “Poems,” 1862; Vols. 3, 4, of Sir F. Palgrave’s “History of Normandy,” 1864; “Selected Poems of Wordsworth,” 1865; “Songs and Sonnets of Shakespeare,” 1865; “Scott’s Poems” (with memoir), 1866; “Chrysomela, from Herrick,” 1877; Keats’ “Poems,” 1884; Tennyson’s “Lyrical Poems,” selected, 1885; J. C. Shairp’s “Glen Desseray,” 1888.
Personal
One had but to touch on any subject in the history of English literature, or to ask him a question, and there was always an abundance of most valuable information to be got from him. I owe him a great deal, particularly in my early Oxford days. For it was he who revised my first attempts at writing in English, and gave me good advice for the rest of my journey, more particularly as to what to avoid.
Palgrave was one of those men whose distinction and influence consist less in creative power than in that appreciation of the best things which is the highest kind of criticism, and in the habit of living, in all matters of both art and life, at the highest standard. This quality, which is what is meant by the classical spirit, he possessed to a degree always rare, and perhaps more rare than ever in the present age. Beyond this, but not connected with it, were qualities which only survive in the memory of his friends—childlike transparency of character, affectionateness, and quick human sympathy.
General
He trains and curbs his own Pegasus with as much anxiety or more than he shows in selecting perfect gems for his Golden Treasury, or in applying rules of art in his Essays…. The poem of “Alcestis” is one of the best examples of Mr. Palgrave’s classical taste…. Neither Euripides nor Sophocles would have cared to throw their treatment of Alcestis into a mould which was difficult for their countrymen to appreciate, and if they had done so, the sense of effort would have taught them and their audience that they were following an unnatural process. And so with Mr. Palgrave and with all the other poets, great and small, who have imitated the Greeks; as studies, their work is no doubt not only valuable, but necessary to high excellence; as poems, one might almost say that the greater the success the greater is the failure; the closer the copy the more obvious is the tour de force. Study of Greek art is therefore only the stepping-stone to success, and Mr. Palgrave, after showing, as in his “Alcestis,” how careful his study had been, was yet to find his natural vein and to prove the quality of his genius. That this is refined is obvious enough. That it is generous in its sympathies, is evident.
He may be said to represent the latest attitude of the meditative poets, and in this closely resembles Arnold, of whom I have already spoken as the most conspicuous and able modern leader of their school. Indeed, there is scarcely a criticism which I have made upon the one that will not apply to the other. Palgrave, with less objective taste and rhythmical skill than are displayed in Arnold’s larger poems, is in his lyrics equally searching and philosophical, and occasionally shows evidence of a musical and more natural ear.
He is masculine, dignified, large, lucid. There is a studious simplicity, a singular fitness, both in his phraseology and his style. He is never carried away by his subject, and his critical faculties always seem to reign supreme. And yet he knows well the value of feeling in poetry. Of childhood, girlhood, and womanhood, of Love Mr. Palgrave sings with rare delicacy and originality. His verse is characterised by graceful and dignified simplicity, but there is no lack of fire and vigour when the subject calls for them.
Mr. Palgrave has little care for technique: his rhymes are hackneyed; he uses loose stanza-forms, in which the first and third lines are unrhymed: always the thought is more to him than its metrical setting. And it is in the region of thought that Mr. Palgrave’s strength is to be found. He is at home with the problems that lie on the borderland of religion and philosophy, the problems of doubt and faith and hope, of world-weariness and world-despair. In such poems as “On Lyme Beach,” “Quatuor Novissima,” “At Ephesus,” the influence of Matthew Arnold, with his music of mournful speculation, is plainly apparent. Only it is always with a difference: Mr. Palgrave’s tendency is to acceptance, not rejection; he questions, but it is to emphasise his final reliance upon the orthodox answer…. His hymns have not indeed the delicate beauty of Miss Rossetti’s religious lyrics: yet there are several that for dignity and simplicity of phrase are far beyond compare with the doggerel that mostly fills our hymn books.
Mr. Palgrave must have felt that he could count upon a large circle of readers who thought as he himself thought, not with regard to the merits of this or that poem, of this or that school, of this or that author, but with regard to the vastly wider questions concerning the qualities that belong to and distinguish the best poetry. There is no note of uncertainty in Mr. Palgrave’s voice. His is no mere effort to satisfy the prevailing fancy of his own generation, but a challenge to all generations to come; he has, in effect, made definite pronouncement and proclamation upon every English lyric. Bold as he was sagacious, Mr. Palgrave has achieved unique success, and the respect as well as the gratitude of all lovers of poetry has long been freely rendered him.
There is no arguing on matters of taste, and exception might easily be taken sometimes to Palgrave’s judgment as a compiler and sometimes to his dicta as a critic. But this at least must be conceded by everybody, that in the best and most comprehensive sense of the term he was a man of classical temper, taste and culture, and that he had all the insight and discernment, all the instincts and sympathies, which are the result of such qualifications…. As a scholar, Palgrave was rather elegant than profound or exact, and to judge from a series of lectures delivered by him as Professor of Poetry at Oxford, on “Landscape in Classical Poetry,” and afterwards published in a work which was reviewed in these columns, his acquaintance with the Greek and Roman poets was, if sympathetic, somewhat superficial.
Francis Turner Palgrave was preëminent in two offices: he was a perfect critic, and a perfect friend. The fairest and most famous English spirits of his time, “all the clear-ranged unnumbered heads,” moved in accord with his, and their names star the pages of his biography…. His elegantly strenuous mental life, best surveyed in Miss Gwenllian Palgrave’s volume, leaves us an equally divided legacy of original verse, and of English verse edited by him. His own poetry is full of feeling and of high-mindedness; it has a certain clean strength, a music, a wide survey, even where it lacks the extreme of craftsmanship. Of these sweet, wise, and most useful books, four in number, it seems hard to say: “these have their time to pass.” But to say so is only to anticipate the verdict of posterity. The name Palgrave will not suffer: it is an immortal name. It will come to mean one glorious service, one gift exquisitely and easily given. Anthologies come, and anthologies go, but only the Greek Garland and England’s Helicon, and with them, the first series of “The Golden Treasury” stand bright as the sun.
During annual holidays spent with Tennyson in England or abroad, the scheme and contents of the “Golden Treasury” were now being evolved. It was published in 1861, and obtained an immediate and decisive success which has continued for forty years. The enterprise was one often attempted before, and often renewed since; but it at once blotted out all its predecessors, and retains its primacy among the large and yearly increasing ranks of similar or cognate volumes towards which it has given the first stimulus. In itself it is, like all anthologies, open to criticism both for its inclusions and its omissions. In later editions some of these criticisms were admitted and met by Palgrave himself. But it remains one of those rare instances in which critical work has a substantive imaginative value, and entitles its author to a rank among creative artists.
Palgrave has the unique distinction of having acquired, merely by compiling an anthology, a degree of literary reputation such as comes only to authors who write very successful books. Palgrave, indeed, is known where many authors, properly to be called successful, are not known. His modest volume, “The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrics in the English Language,” was published nearly forty years ago. Such has been its repute that not to know it is to argue one’s self strangely unfamiliar with the books of the generations now past. Not only has the book gone through edition after edition, but it has given its name to one of the most successful series of books of our generation. There can be no doubt that the success of that series in very considerable degree was indebted to the name it bore and the distinguished company its volumes kept.
