duated at Harvard in
1846, taking the highest rank in his class in all subjects; was tutor in
mathematics in 1846-1848; and in 1848 was transferred to a tutorship in
history, political economy and English. After two years of study in
Europe, in 1851 he succeeded Edward T. Channing as Boylston professor of
rhetoric, oratory and elocution. Child studied the English drama (having
edited _Four Old Plays_ in 1848) and Germanic philology, the latter at
Berlin and Goettingen during a leave of absence, 1849-1853; and he took
general editorial supervision of a large collection of the British
poets, published in Boston in 1853 and following years. He edited
Spenser (5 vols., Boston, 1855), and at one time planned an edition of
Chaucer, but contented himself with a treatise, in the _Memoirs of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences_ for 1863, entitled "Observations
on the Language of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales," which did much to
establish Chaucerian grammar, pronunciation and scansion as now
generally understood. His largest undertaking, however, grew out of an
original collection, in his British Poets series, of _English and
Scottish Ballads_, selected and edited by himself, in eight small
volumes (Boston, 1857-1858). Thenceforward the leisure of his life--much
increased by his transfer, in 1876, to the new professorship of
English--was devoted to the comparative study of British vernacular
ballads. He accumulated, in the university library, one of the largest
folklore collections in existence, studied manuscript rather than
printed sources, and carried his investigations into the ballads of all
other tongues, meanwhile giving a sedulous but conservative hearing to
popular versions still surviving. At last his final collection was
published as _The English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, at first in ten
parts (1882-1898), and then in five quarto volumes, which remain the
authoritative treasury of their subject. Professor Child worked--and
overworked--to the last, dying in Boston on the 11th of September 1896,
having completed his task save for a general introduction and
bibliography. A sympathetic biographical sketch was prefixed to the work
by his pupil and successor George L. Kittredge.

CHILD, SIR JOHN (d. 1690), governor of Bombay, and in fact if not in
name the first governor-general of the British settlements in India, was
born in London. He was sent as a little boy to his uncle, the chief of
the factory at Rajapur