in the preface, as little more than a reprint of the edition published
in 1839 under the superintendence of Mr George Hillard, the book grew
upon his hands until it had become something quite different from its
predecessor. Securing access to old copies of most of Spenser's poems,
Mr Child subjected the text to a careful revision, which left little to
be done in this regard. His Life of Spenser was far better than any
previous biography, and his notes, though brief, were marked by a
philological exactness to which former editions could not pretend.
Altogether, though meant for the general reader and therefore sparingly
annotated, Mr Child's volumes remain, after forty years, the best
edition of Spenser in existence.
The plan of the 'British Poets' originally contemplated an edition of
Chaucer, which Mr Child was to prepare. Becoming convinced, however,
that the time was not ripe for such a work, he abandoned this project,
and to the end of his life he never found time to resume it. Thomas
Wright's print of the Canterbury Tales[4] from the Harleian MS. 7334
had, however, put into his hands a reasonably faithful reproduction of
an old text, and he turned his attention to a minute study of Chaucer's
language. The outcome was the publication, in the Memoirs of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 1863, of the great treatise to
which Mr Child gave the modest title of Observations on the Language of
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It is difficult, at the present day, to
imagine the state of Chaucer philology at the moment when this paper
appeared. Scarcely anything, we may say, was known of Chaucer's grammar
and metre in a sure and scientific way. Indeed, the difficulties to be
solved had not even been clearly formulated. Further, the accessible
mass of evidence on Anglo-Saxon and Middle English was, in comparison
with the stores now at the easy command of every tyro, almost
insignificant. Yet, in this brief treatise, Mr Child not only defined
the problems, but provided for most of them a solution which the
researches of younger scholars have only served to substantiate. He also
gave a perfect model of the method proper to such inquiries--a method
simple, laborious, and exact. The Observations were subsequently
rearranged and condensed, with Professor Child's permission, by Mr A. J.
Ellis for his work On Early English Pronunciation; but only those who
have studied them in their original form can appreciate their merit
fully. "It ought never to be forgotten," writes Professor Skeat, "that
the only full and almost complete solution of the question of the right
scansion of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is due to what Mr Ellis rightly
terms 'the wonderful industry, acuteness, and accuracy of Professor
Child.'" Had he produced nothing else, this work, with its pendant, the
Observations on Gower,[5] would have assured him a high place among
those very few scholars who have permanently settled important problems
of linguistic science.
Mr Child's crowning work, however, was the edition of the English and
Scottish Popular Ballads, which the reader now has before him. The
history of this is the history of more than half a lifetime.
The idea of the present work grew out of Mr Child's editorial labors on
the series of the 'British Poets,' already referred to. For this he
prepared a collection in eight small volumes (1857-58) called English
and Scottish Ballads.[6] This was marked by the beginnings of that
method of comparative study which is carried out to its ultimate issues
in the volumes of the present collection. The book circulated widely,
and was at once admitted to supersede all previous attempts in the same
field. To Mr Child, however, it was but the starting-point for further
researches. He soon formed the plan of a much more extensive collection
on an altogether different model. This was to include every obtainable
version of every extant English or Scottish ballad, with the fullest
possible discussion of related songs or stories in the "popular"
literature of all nations. To this enterprise he resolved, if need were,
to devote the rest of his life. His first care was to secure trustworthy
texts. In his earlier collection he had been forced to depend almost
entirely on printed books. No progress, he was convinced, could be made
till recourse could be had to manuscripts, and in particular to the
Percy MS. Accordingly he directed his most earnest efforts to securing
the publication of the entire contents of the famous folio. The Percy
MS. was at Ecton Hall, in the possession of the Bishop's descendants,
who would permit no one even to examine it. Two attempts were made by Dr
Furnivall, at Mr Child's instance, to induce the owners to allow the
manuscript to be printed,--one as early as 1860 or 1861, the other in
1864,--but without avail. A third attempt was more successful, and in
1867-68 the long-secluded folio was made the common property of scholars
in an edition prepared by Professor Hales and Dr Furnivall.[7]
The publication of the Percy MS. not only put a large amount of
trustworthy material at the disposal of Mr Child; it exposed the full
enormity of Bishop Percy's sins against popular tradition. Some shadow
of suspicion inevitably fell on all other ballad collections. It was
more than ever clear to Mr Child that he could not safely take anything
at second hand, and he determined not to print a line of his projected
work till he had exhausted every effort to get hold of whatever
manuscript material might be in existence. His efforts in this direction
continued through many years. A number of manuscripts were in private
hands; of some the whereabouts was not known; of others the existence
was not suspected. But Mr Child was untiring. He was cordially assisted
by various scholars, antiquaries, and private gentlemen, to whose
coöperation ample testimony is borne in the Advertisements prefixed to
the volumes in the present work. Some manuscripts were secured for the
Library of Harvard University--notably Bishop Percy's Papers, the
Kinloch MSS, and the Harris MS.,[8]--and of others careful copies were
made, which became the property of the same library. In all these
operations the indispensable good offices of Mr William Macmath, of
Edinburgh, deserve particular mention. For a long series of years his
services were always at Mr Child's disposal. His self-sacrifice and
generosity appear to have been equalled only by his perseverance and
wonderful accuracy. But for him the manuscript basis of The English and
Scottish Popular Ballads would have been far less strong than it is.
Gradually, then, the manuscript materials came in, until at last, in
1882, Mr Child felt justified in beginning to print. Other important
documents were, however, discovered or made accessible as time went on.
Especially noteworthy was the great find at Abbotsford (see the
Advertisement to Part VIII). In 1877 Dr David Laing procured, "not
without difficulty," leave to prepare for Mr Child a copy of the single
manuscript of ballads then known to remain in the library at Abbotsford.
This MS., entitled "Scottish Songs," was so inconsiderable, in
proportion to the accumulations which Sir Walter Scott had made in
preparing his Border Minstrelsy, that further search seemed to be
imperatively necessary. In 1890 permission to make such a search, and to
use the results, was given by the Honorable Mrs Maxwell-Scott. The
investigation, made by Mr Macmath, yielded a rich harvest of ballads,
which were utilized in Parts VII-IX. To dwell upon the details would be
endless. The reader may see a list of the manuscript sources at pp. 397
ff. of the fifth volume; and, if he will observe how scattered they
were, he will have no difficulty in believing that it required years,
labor, and much delicate negotiation to bring them all together. One
manuscript remained undiscoverable, William Tytler's Brown MS., but
there is no reason to believe that this contained anything of
consequence that is not otherwise known.[9]
Meanwhile, concurrently with the toil of amassing, collating, and
arranging texts, went on the far more arduous labor of comparative study
of the ballads of all nations; for, in accordance with Mr Child's plan
it was requisite to determine, in the fullest manner, the history and
foreign relations of every piece included in his collection. To this end
he devoted much time and unwearied diligence to forming, in the Library
of the University, a special collection of "Folk-lore," particularly of
ballads, romances, and _Märchen_. This priceless collection, the
formation of which must be looked on as one of Mr Child's most striking
services to the university, numbers some 7000 volumes. But these figures
by no means represent the richness of the Library in the departments
concerned, or the services of Mr Child in this particular. Mediæval
literature in all its phases was his province, and thousands of volumes
classified in other departments of the University Library bear testimony
to his vigilance in ordering books, and his astonishing bibliographical
knowledge. Very few books are cited in the present collection which are
not to be found on the shelves of this Library.
In addition, Mr Child made an effort to stimulate the collection of such
remains of the traditional ballad as still live on the lips of the
people in this country and in the British Islands. The harvest was, in
his opinion, rather scanty; yet, if all the versions thus recovered from
tradition were enumerated, the number would not be found inconsiderable.
Enough was done, at all events, to make it clear that little or nothing
of value remains to be recovered in this way.
To readers familiar with such studies, no comment is necessary, and to
those who are unfamiliar with them, no form of statement can convey even
a faint impression of the industry, the learning, the acumen, and the
literary skill which these processes required. In writing the history of
a single ballad, Mr Child was sometimes forced to examine hundreds of
books in perhaps a dozen different languages. But his industry was
unflagging, his sagacity was scarcely ever at fault, and his linguistic
and literary knowledge seemed to have no bounds. He spared no pains to
perfect his work in every detail, and his success was commensurate with
his efforts. In the Advertisement to the Ninth Part (1894), he was able
to report that the three hundred and five numbers of his collection
comprised the whole extant mass of this traditional material, with the
possible exception of a single ballad.[10]
In June, 1896, Mr Child concluded his fiftieth year of service as a
teacher in Harvard College. He was at this time hard at work on the
Tenth and final Part, which was to contain a glossary, various indexes,
a bibliography, and an elaborate introduction on the general subject.
For years he had allowed himself scarcely any respite from work, and, in
spite of the uncertain condition of his health,--or perhaps in
consequence of it,--he continued to work at high pressure throughout the
summer. At the end of August he discovered that he was seriously ill. He
died at Boston on the 11th day of September. He had finished his great
work except for the introduction and the general bibliography. The
bibliography was in preparation by another hand and has since been
completed. The introduction, however, no other scholar had the hardihood
to undertake. A few pages of manuscript,--the last thing written by his
pen,--almost illegible, were found among his papers to show that he had
actually begun the composition of this essay, and many sheets of
excerpts testified to the time he had spent in refreshing his memory as
to the opinions of his predecessors, but he had left no collectanea that
could be utilized in supplying the Introduction itself. He was
accustomed to carry much of his material in his memory till the moment
of composition arrived, and this habit accounts for the fact that there
are no jottings of opinions and no sketch of precisely what line of
argument he intended to take.
Mr Child's sudden death was felt as a bitter personal loss, not only by
an unusually large circle of attached friends in both hemispheres, but
by very many scholars who knew him through his works alone. He was one
of the few learned men to whom the old title of "Master" was justly due
and freely accorded. With astonishing erudition, which nothing seemed to
have escaped, he united an infectious enthusiasm and a power of lucid
and fruitful exposition that made him one of the greatest of teachers,
and a warmth and openness of heart that won the affection of all who
knew him. In most men, however complex their characters, one can
distinguish the qualities of the heart, in some degree, from the
qualities of the head. In Professor Child no such distinction was
possible, for all the elements of his many-sided nature were fused in
his marked and powerful individuality. In his case, the scholar and the
man cannot be separated. His life and his learning were one; his work
was the expression of himself.
As an investigator Professor Child was at once the inspiration and the
despair of his disciples. Nothing could surpass the scientific exactness
of his methods and the unwearied diligence with which he conducted his
researches. No possible source of information could elude him; no book
or manuscript was too voluminous or too unpromising for him to examine
on the chance of its containing some fact that might correct or
supplement his material, even in the minutest point. Yet these qualities
of enthusiastic accuracy and thoroughness, admirable as they undoubtedly
were, by no means dominated him. They were always at the command of the
higher qualities of his genius,--sagacity, acumen, and a kind of
sympathetic and imaginative power in which he stood almost alone among
recent scholars. No detail of language or tradition or archæology was to
him a mere lifeless fact; it was transmuted into something vital, and
became a part of that universal humanity which always moved him wherever
he found it, whether in the pages of a mediæval chronicle, or in the
stammering accents of a late and vulgarly distorted ballad, or in the
faces of the street boys who begged roses from his garden. No man ever
felt a keener interest in his kind, and no scholar ever brought this
interest into more vivifying contact with the technicalities of his
special studies. The exuberance of this large humanity pervades his
edition of the English and Scottish ballads. Even in his last years,
when the languor of uncertain health sometimes got the better, for a
season, of the spirit with which he commonly worked, some fresh bit of
genuine poetry in a ballad, some fine trait of pure nature in a stray
folk-tale, would, in an instant, bring back the full flush of that
enthusiasm which he must have felt when the possibilities of his
achievement first presented themselves to his mind in early manhood. For
such a nature there was no old age.
From this ready sympathy came that rare faculty--seldom possessed by
scholars--which made Professor Child peculiarly fit for his greatest
task. Few persons understand the difficulties of ballad investigation.
In no field of literature have the forger and the manipulator worked
with greater vigor and success. From Percy's day to our own it has been
thought an innocent device to publish a bit of one's own versifying, now
and then, as an "old ballad" or an "ancient song." Often, too, a late
stall-copy of a ballad, getting into oral circulation, has been
innocently furnished to collectors as traditional matter. Mere learning
will not guide an editor through these perplexities. What is needed is,
in addition, a complete understanding of the "popular" genius, a
sympathetic recognition of the traits that characterize oral literature
wherever and in whatever degree they exist. This faculty, which even the
folk has not retained, and which collectors living in ballad-singing and
tale-telling times have often failed to acquire, was vouchsafed by
nature herself to this sedentary scholar. In reality a kind of instinct,
it had been so cultivated by long and loving study of the traditional
literature of all nations that it had become wonderfully swift in its
operations and almost infallible. A forged or retouched piece could not
deceive him for a moment; he detected the slightest jar in the genuine
ballad tone. He speaks in one place of certain writers "who would have
been all the better historians for a little reading of romances." He was
himself the better interpreter of the poetry of art for this keen
sympathy with the poetry of nature.
Constant association with the spirit of the folk did its part in
maintaining, under the stress of unremitting study and research, that
freshness and buoyancy of mind which was the wonder of all who met
Professor Child for the first time, and the perpetual delight of his
friends and associates. It is impossible to describe the charm of his
familiar conversation. There was endless variety without effort. His
peculiar humor, taking shape in a thousand felicities of thought and
phrase that fell casually and as it were inevitably from his lips,
exhilarated without reaction or fatigue. His lightest words were full of
fruitful suggestion. Sudden strains of melancholy or high seriousness
were followed, in a moment, by flashes of gaiety almost boyish. And
pervading it all one felt the attraction of his personality and the
goodness of his heart.
Professor Child's humor was not only one of his most striking
characteristics as a man; it was of constant service to his scholarly
researches. Keenly alive to any incongruity in thought or fact, and the
least self-conscious of men, he scrutinized his own nascent theories
with the same humorous shrewdness with which he looked at the ideas of
others. It is impossible to think of him as the sponsor of some
hypotheses which men of equal eminence have advanced and defended with
passion; and, even if his goodness of nature had not prevented it, his
sense of the ridiculous would not have suffered him to engage in the
absurdities of philological polemics. In the interpretation of
literature, his humor stood him in good stead, keeping his native
sensibility under due control, so that it never degenerated into
sentimentalism. It made him a marvelous interpreter of Chaucer, whose
spirit he had caught to a degree attained by no other scholar or
critic.
To younger scholars Professor Child was an influence at once stimulating
and benignant. To confer with him was always to be stirred to greater
effort, but, at the same time, the serenity of his devotion to learning
chastened the petulance of immature ambition in others. The talk might
be quite concrete, even definitely practical,--it might deal with
indifferent matters; but, in some way, there was an irradiation of the
master's nature that dispelled all unworthy feelings. In the presence of
his noble modesty the bustle of self-assertion was quieted and the petty
spirit of pedantic wrangling could not assert itself. However severe his
criticism, there were no personalities in it. He could not be other than
outspoken,--concealment and shuffling were abhorrent to him,--yet such
was his kindliness that his frankest judgments never wounded; even his
reproofs left no sting. With his large charity was associated, as its
necessary complement in a strong character, a capacity for righteous
indignation. "He is almost the only man I know," said one in his
lifetime, "who _thinks no evil_." There could be no truer word. Yet when
he was confronted with injury or oppression, none could stand against
the anger of this just man. His unselfishness did not suffer him to see
offences against himself, but wrong done to another roused him in an
instant to protesting action.
Professor Child's publications, despite their magnitude and
importance, are no adequate measure either of his acquirements or of
his influence. He printed nothing about Shakspere, for example, yet he
was the peer of any Shaksperian, past or present, in knowledge and
interpretative power. As a Chaucer scholar he had no superior, in this
country or in Europe: his published work was confined, as we have
seen, to questions of language, but no one had a wider or closer
acquaintance with the whole subject. An edition of Chaucer from his
hand would have been priceless. His acquaintance with letters was not
confined to special authors or centuries. He was at home in modern
European literature and profoundly versed in that of the Middle Ages.
In his immediate territory,--English,--his knowledge, linguistic and
literary, covered all periods, and was alike exact and thorough. His
taste and judgment were exquisite, and he enlightened every subject
which he touched. As a writer, he was master of a singularly
felicitous style, full of individuality and charm. Had his time not
been occupied in other ways, he would have made the most delightful of
essayists.
Fortunately, Professor Child's courses of instruction in the
university--particularly those on Chaucer and Shakspere--gave him an
opportunity to impart to a constantly increasing circle of pupils the
choicest fruits of his life of thought and study. In his later years he
had the satisfaction to see grow up about him a school of young
specialists who can have no higher ambition than to be worthy of their
master. But his teaching was not limited to these,--it included all
sorts and conditions of college students; and none, not even the idle
and incompetent, could fail to catch something of his spirit. One thing
may be safely asserted: no university teacher was ever more beloved.
And with this may fitly close too slight a tribute to the memory of a
great scholar and a good man. Many things remain unsaid. His gracious
family life, his civic virtues, his patriotism, his bounty to the
poor,--all must be passed by with a bare mention, which yet will signify
much to those who knew him. In all ways he lived worthily, and he died
having attained worthy ends.
G. L. KITTREDGE.
[1] C. E. Norton, 'Francis James Child,' in the Proceedings of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, XXXII, 334, 335; reprinted, with
some additions, in the Harvard Graduates' Magazine, VI, 161-169 (Boston,
1897). I have used this biographical sketch freely in my brief account
of Professor Child's boyhood.
[2] Four Old Plays | Three Interludes: Thersytes Jack Jugler | and
Heywoods Pardoner and Frere: | and Jocasta a Tragedy | by Gascoigne and
| Kinwelmarsh | with an | Introduction and Notes | Cambridge | George
Nichols | MDCCCXLVIII. The editor's name does not appear in the
title-page, but the Preface is signed with the initials F. J. C. Jocasta
was printed from Steevens's copy of the first edition of Garcoigne's
Posies, which had come into Mr Child's possession.
[3] The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser. The text carefully revised,
and illustrated with notes, original and selected, by Francis J. Child.
Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1855. 5 vols.
[4] The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer. A new text, with
illustrative notes. Edited by Thomas Wright. London, printed for the
Percy Society, 1847-51. 3 vols.
[5] The paper entitled Observations on the Language of Chaucer was laid
before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on June 3, 1862, and
was published in the Memoirs of the Academy, Vol. VIII, pt. ii, 445-502
(Boston, 1863). The second paper, entitled Observations on the Language
of Gower's Confessio Amantis, was laid before the Academy on January 9,
1866, and appeared in Memoirs, IX, ii, 265-315 (Boston, 1873). A few
copies of each paper were struck off separately, but these are now very
hard to find. Mr Ellis's rearrangement and amalgamation of the two
papers, which is by no means a good substitute for the papers
themselves, may be found in Part I of his Early English Pronunciation,
London, 1869, pp. 343-97.
[6] English and Scottish Ballads. Selected and edited by Francis James
Child. Boston, 1857-58.
[7] How inseparable were the services of Dr Furnivall and those of
Professor Child in securing this devoutly wished consummation may be
seen by comparing Dr Furnivall's Forewords (I, ix, x), in which he gives
much of the credit to Mr Child, with Mr Child's Dedication (in vol. I of
the present collection), in which he gives the credit to Dr Furnivall.