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.