FRANCIS JAMES CHILD. 835 



of the true objects of life, and of the motives by which the educated man, 

 whatever might be his chosen career, should be inspired, together with 

 the serious and eloquent earnestness with which it was delivered, gave 

 to his discourse peculiar impressiveuess and effect.* 



Immediately upon his graduation he was appointed Tutor in the Col- 

 lege, with duties of instruction in English. To the study of the English 

 language and literature he was led by taste, and his knowledge was 

 already considerable in this wide field, to the cultivation of which the 

 remainder of his life was to be in great part devoted, and in which he was 

 to become an acknowledged master. In 1848 he published his first work, 

 an edition in one volume of " Four Old Plays," all of the sixteenth 

 century, and of interest to the student of the development of the English 

 drama as exhibiting its conditions immediately before its splendid mani- 

 festation in the works of the Elizabethan playwrights. Nothing of the 

 kind had l)een done previously in America. The volume appealed to 

 but a small class of readers, but, with those who were competent to 

 judge ofit, it established the reputation of its editor as a scholar of more 

 than usual competence of learning and sobriety of judgment. 



In 1851, on the resignation of Professor Channing as Boylston Pro- 

 fessor of Rhetoric, Child was appointed his successor with leave of ab- 

 sence for study in Europe, before assuming the duties of the position. 

 The opportunities which Europe then afforded to the young American 

 scholar were diligently made use of. He obtained the degree of Doctor 

 of Philosophy at Gottingen in 1854, and in the autumn of the same year 

 he returned to his work at Harvard. A great part of his time was em- 

 ployed in the teaching of English composition, and the drudgery of cor- 

 recting students' exercises, but he had an indefatigable industry and a 

 steady ardor of learning, and he found time to carry on his own special 

 studies. He undertook the general superintendence of a series of the 

 works of the chief British Poets, and himself prepared for it the edition 

 of Spencer (1855) in five volumes, which for the use of the general 

 reader still remains the best. For the same series he compiled a Col- 

 lection of Ballads in eight volumes, published in 1857-58, which in 

 extent of range, in judgment in selection, and in thoroughness of liter- 

 ary and historical illustration, was far superior to any preceding similar 



* An eminent living graduate of Harvard, who was present on the occasion, 

 having come to Cambridge to take his entrance examination, has said that he re- 

 ceived from that oration his first vivid sense of the dignity of intellectual pursuits, 

 and his first strong impulse to devote himself to them. 



