The older daughter of the Milnes
Gaskells had married Francis Turner Palgrave. Few Americans will
ever ask whether any one has described the Palgraves, but the
family was one of the most describable in all England at that
day. Old Sir Francis, the father, had been much the greatest of
all the historians of early England, the only one who was
un-English; and the reason of his superiority lay in his name,
which was Cohen, and his mind which was Cohen also, or at least
not English. He changed his name to Palgrave in order to please
his wife. They had a band of remarkable sons: Francis Turner,
Gifford, Reginald, Inglis; all of whom made their mark. Gifford
was perhaps the most eccentric, but his "Travels" in Arabia were
famous, even among the famous travels of that generation. Francis
Turner -- or, as he was commonly called, Frank Palgrave -- unable
to work off his restlessness in travel like Gifford, and stifled
in the atmosphere of the Board of Education, became a critic. His
art criticisms helped to make the Saturday Review a terror to the
British artist. His literary taste, condensed into the "Golden
Treasury," helped Adams to more literary education than he ever
got from any taste of his own. Palgrave himself held rank as one
of the minor poets; his hymns had vogue. As an art-critic he was
too ferocious to be liked; even Holman Hunt found his temper
humorous; among many rivals, he may perhaps have had a right to
claim the much-disputed rank of being the most unpopular man in
London; but he liked to teach, and asked only for a docile pupil.
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