The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Pieces in the English Language

Francis Turner Palgrave (1824-1897) was a British critic and poet. Palgrave published both criticism and poetry, but his work as a critic was by far the more important. His The Visions of England (1880-1881) has dignity and lucidity. His last volume of poetry, Amenophis, appeared in 1892. His criticism is considered to demonstrate fine and sensitive tact, quick intuitive perception, and generally sound judgment. His Handbook to the Fine Arts Collection, International Exhibition (1862), and his Essays on Art (1866), though flawed, were full of striking judgments strikingly expressed. But Palgrave's principal contribution to the development of literary taste was contained in his The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Pieces in the English Language (1861), an anthology of the best poetry in the language constructed upon a plan sound and spacious, and followed out with a delicacy of feeling which could scarcely be surpassed. Palgrave followed it with a Treasury of Sacred Song (1889), and a second series of the The Golden Treasury (1897), including the work of later poets, but in neither of these was quite the same exquisiteness of judgment preserved. Among his other works were The Passionate Pilgrim (1858), a volume of selections from Robert Herrick entitled Chrysomela (1877), a memoir of Arthur Hugh Clough (1862) and a critical essay on Sir Walter Scott (1866) prefixed to an edition of his poems.