Child

Child, FRANCIS JAMES, the most learned of ballad editors, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, February 1, 1825. He graduated at Harvard in 1846, and was an instructor there for some time in the department of mathematics, and afterwards in that of rhetoric. After a year or two spent in Europe, he was in 1851 appointed to the chair of Rhetoric at Harvard, which he exchanged in 1876 for that of Anglo-Saxon and Early English Literature. His first work was Four Old Plays (1848); but more important were his annotated edition of Spenser (5 vols. Boston, 1855), and of the English and Scottish Ballads (8 vols. Boston, 1857-59), in a great American series of 'British Poets.' The latter was at once recognised as the best collection of Scottish and English ballad poetry—a place which it lost only on the completion of the great comparative collection by the same editor (10 parts, Boston, 1882-97). This may be accepted as the final work on its subject, as it contains all the versions and variants collected from all sources, while the introductions to each ballad are masterpieces of luminousness and learning. An édition de luxe in form, and singularly free from typographical and other errors, this work will continue to be indispensable to all serious students of popular poetry. Professor Child also contributed some valuable notes to Hales and Furnivall's reprint of Bishop Percy's folio manuscript (1867-68). His 'Observations on the Language of Chaucer and Gower,' in the Memoirs of the American Academy, and reprinted in Ellis's Early English Pronunciation (1869) show a marvellous grasp of Middle English grammar. He died 11th September 1896.