CHILD, Francis James, educator, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 1 February, 1825. He was graduated at Harvard in 1846, and became tutor there, first of mathematics and afterward of rhetoric and history. In 1849-'50 he studied and travelled in Europe, and in 1851 succeeded Prof. E. T. Channing as professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard, which chair he exchanged for that of English literature in 1876. He has specially distinguished himself as a scholar of Anglo-Saxon and early English literature. He superintended the Amen-can edition of the British poets, and edited himself the works of Spenser and the collection of English and Scottish ballads (Boston, 1857-'8), besides preparing notes and biographical sketches for other volumes of the series. Prof. Child has spent much time in English libraries in studying especially the text of Chaucer with reference to a new edition of his poems. He has also devoted much labor to improving and enlarging his principal work, the "English and Scottish Ballads," now (1886) in course of publication. His other published works are "Four Old Plays" (1848); a collection of "Poems of Sorrow and Comfort " (Boston, 1865); and "Observations on the Language of Chaucer and Gower" in the first part of Ellis's "Early English Pronunciation" (London, 1869).