Art Critic, Author. He was well-known for being a bitter critic of 19th century British art. F. T. Palgrave was the art and literature critic for "Saturday Review, "Quarterly Review" and other periodicals. Born the eldest son of eminent historian Sir Francis Palgrave, his father changed his surname from Cohen to Palgrave with his conversion from Judaism to Christianity and the marriage to the daughter of a wealthy banker, Elizabeth Turner. After traveling about Europe in his youth, he was home-tutored before being sent to Charterhouse and on a scholarship, to Balliol College at Oxford in 1843. While studying at Oxford, he became part of the circle of the poets Matthew Arnold and Arthur Hugh Clough. In 1846 he left school for the wonderful opportunity of becoming the Private Secretary to William Ewart Gladstone, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, but who would later become Prime Minister. Upon returning to school, he gained a first-class degree Literae Humaniores in 1847. From 1847 to 1862 he was a fellow of Exter College, graduating in 1856, when he took both his B. A. and M.A. In 1849 he entered the Education Department at Whitehall. He was appointed vice principal of a Training College at Kneller Hall in Twickenham but returned to Whitehall when this closed in 1855. After serving many years, he resigned from the Education Department of the Privy Council in 1884 and became Professor of Poetry at Oxford until 1895. He had been nominated for that position at least three times in the past but declined A volume of his Oxford lectures, "Landscape in Poetry" was published in 1897. He was a long-time friend of the liberal poet, Lord Alfred Tennyson, but his own viewpoints became more conservative with age. He is credited with publishing a collection of hymns in 1867 and 1870 along with "Stories for Children" in 1867. He is chiefly remembered for his 1861 anthology of other poets' compositions, "The Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics," which was the first of three of his anthologies. In the 21st century, "The Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics" is in the sixth edition. In 1866 he published a collection of essays on art. One of his three collections of his authored poems, "The Visions of England" in 1881, is considered his best works. He was commissioned to published the "Descriptive Handbook" for the fine art department of the Great London Exposition, or the 1862 World Fair, but he was the target for bitter criticism partly since Arthur Hugh Clough had started the project before his death. Part of this pamphlet was sold as a collector's item at Christie's auction. In December of 1862 he married Cecil Grenville Milnes and the couple had four daughters and two sons. Dying after a short illness, he was predeceased by a son and his wife. One of his three brothers is Arabic scholar, William Gifford Palgrave. In 1878 he was made an honorary LL.D. of Edinburgh University.