Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

Chap. IV.

GROUP OF

ARCHEOLO

men not commonly afraid of labour, but to William Book III, CURETON the scholarly ardour of discovery made the task, ANOTHER from the first, a pleasure. When successive fresh arrivals gave new hope that many gaps in the manuscripts of earliest importation would, in course of time, be filled up, the laborious pleasure ripened into joy.

GISTS AND

EXPLORERS.

TARY CON-
DITION OF

THE SYRIAC
PORTED IN

MSS. IM

1843.

The collection, obtained by the long succession of labours already narrated, reached the British Museum on the first of May, 1843. When the cases were opened, very few indeed of the MSS., were perfect. Nearly two FRAGMENhundred volumes had been torn into separate leaves, and then mixed up together, by blind chance and human stupidity. It was a perplexing sight. But the eyes that looked on it belonged to a seeing head. Even into a little chaos like this, almost hopeless as at the first glance it seemed, the learning, assiduity, and patience of Mr. CHURTON gradually brought order. Of necessity, the task took a long time. First came the separation of the fragments of different works, and then the arrangement of the leaves into volumes, with no aid to pagination or catchwords. With translations of extant Greek works, the collection of their originals gave, of course, great help. But in a multitude of cases every leaf had to be read and closely studied.

Within about eighteen months of the reception of the MSS., Mr. CURETON had ascertained the number of volumes -reckoning books made up of fragments, as well as complete works-to amount to three hundred and seventeen, of which two hundred and forty-six were on vellum, and seventy on paper; all in Syriac or Aramaic, except one. volume of Coptic fragments. With the forty-nine volumes previously acquired, an addition was thus made to the MS. Department of the National Library of three hundred and sixty-six volumes.

Many of these volumes contain two,

BOOK III,
Chap. IV.
ANOTHER

GROUP OF
ARCHEOLO-

GISTS AND
EXPLORERS.

DR. CURE

TON'S PUB

LICATIONS
IN SYRIAC
AND IN
ARABIC

LITERATURE.

three, or four distinct works, of different dates, bound together, so that probably, in the whole, there were of manuscripts and parts of manuscripts, upwards of one thousand, written in all parts of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, and at periods which range from the year 411 to the year 1292. Of the specific character and contents of some of the choicest of these MSS., mention will be made hereafter.

For several years, the labour on the Syriac fragments did but alternate with that on the larger body of the Arabic MSS., a classed catalogue of which Mr. CURETON published in 1846,-only a month or two after he had contributed to the Quarterly Review a deeply interesting and masterly article on the Syriac discoveries. This paper was quickly followed by his first edition of the Three Epistles of St. Ignatius (I, to Polycarp; II, to the Ephesians; III, to the Romans). In an able preface, he contended that, of these genuine Epistles, all previous recensions were, to a considerable extent, interpolated, garbled, and spurious; and also that the other Ignatian Epistles, so-called, are entirely supposititious. In the year 1870 it need hardly be said either that this publication excited much controversy, or that competent opinion is still divided on some parts of the subject. But on two points there has never been any controversy whatever :-As an editor, William CURETON displayed brilliant ability; as a student of theology, he was no less distinguished by a single-minded search after truth. He was never one of those noisy controversialists of whom Walter LANDOR once said, so incisively,* that they were less angry with their opponents for withstanding the truth, than for doubting their own claims to be the channels and the

* In-unless a memory more than thirty years old deceive me—that noble masterpiece of English prose, the Citation of Shakespeare for Deer-stealing' (1835).

champions of Truth. To his dying day, CURETON Owned BOOK III, himself to be a learner-even in Syriac.

Chap. IV.
ANOTHER
GROUP OF

GISTS AND
EXPLORERS.

THE FOUN

OF THE

ORIENTAL
TEXT SO-

CIETY.

Within three years of the publication of his Ignatius, ARCHEOLOCURETON gave to the world his precious edition of the S fragmentary Festal Letters of ATHANASIUS, which Richard BURGESS Soon translated into English, and LASSOW into DATION German. The Syriac version was one of its editor's earliest discoveries amongst the spoils of the Nitrian monasteries, and it was published at the cost of a new society, of which CURETON himself was the main founder. For the old Oriental publication society limited itself, as its name imports, to the publication of translations. The new one -the claims of which to liberal support CURETON was never weary of vindicating—was expressly founded to print Oriental texts. This new body had his strongest sympathies, but he co-operated zealously with the 'Translation Fund' as well as with the Text Society.'

Among his other and early labours, was the publication of a Rabbinical Comment on the Book of Lamentations, and of the Arabic text of EN NASAFI'S Pillar of the Creed of the Sunnites ('Umdat Akidat ahl al Sunnat wa al Tamaat), both of which books were printed in 1843. After 1845, CURETON'S literary labours were almost exclusively devoted to that Syriac field in which he was to be so large and so original a discoverer. The first distinctively public recognition of his services was his appointment as a Chaplain to the Queen, in 1847. Two years afterwards, he was made a Canon of Westminster and Rector of St. Margaret's. Thenceforward, his energies were divided. The charms of Syriac discovery were not permitted to obstruct the due performance of the appropriate work of a parish-priest; though it is much to be feared that they

*The Oriental Translation Fund.

BOOK III,
Chap. IV.
ANOTHER
GROUP OF
ARCHEOLO-

GISTS AND
EXPLORERS.

PAROCHIAL
LABOURS.

FURTHER
CONTRIBU-
TIONS TO
LITERATURE.

MS. Addit. 14,640. (B. M.)

LABOUR AND

ITS REWARDS
IN FRESH

LABOURS.

were but too often permitted to interfere, more than a little, with needful recreation and rest.

Among those of his parochial labours which demanded not a small amount of self-sacrifice were the rebuilding and the improved organization of the schools; the building of a district church-St. Andrew's-in Ashley Place; and the establishment of Working-Class Lectures, upon a wise and far-seeing plan.

In 1851, he gave to scholars the curious palimpsest fragments of HOMER from a Nitrian manuscript (now ADDIT. MS., 17,210), and, two years afterwards, the Ecclesiastical History of JOHN, Bishop of Ephesus. This was quickly translated into German by SCHÖNFEHLER, and into English by Dr. R. Payne SMITH. Then came the Spicilegium Syriacum, containing fragments of BARDESANES, of MELITO of Sardes, and the inexpressibly precious fragments of an ancient recension of the Syriac Gospels, believed by CURETON to be of the fifth century, and offering considerable and most interesting divergences from the Peshito version.

In a preface to these evangelical fragments of the fifth century, their editor contends that they constitute a far more faithful representation of the true Hebrew text than does the Peshito recension, and that the remark holds good, in a more especial degree, of the Gospel of St. Matthew. This publication appeared in 1858.

Enough has been said of these untiring labours to make it quite intelligible, even to readers the most unfamiliar with Oriental studies, that their author had become already a celebrity throughout learned Europe. As early as in 1855, the Institute of France welcomed Dr. CURETON, as one of their corresponding members, in succession to his old master, GAISFORD, of Christ-Church. In 1859, the Queen conferred on him a distinction, which was especially

[ocr errors]

Chap. IV.

appropriate and dear to his feelings. He became Royal BOOK III, Trustee' of that Museum which he had so zealously served ANOTHER as an Assistant-Keeper of the MSS., up to the date of his appointment to his Westminster parish and canonry. No fitter nomination was ever made. Unhappily, he was not to be spared very long to fill a function so congenial.

Yet one other distinction, and also one other and most honourable labour, were to be his, before another illustrious victim was to be added to the long list of public losses inflicted on the country at large by the gross mismanagement, and more particularly by what is called-sardonically, I suppose the 'economy' of our British railways. CURETON'S life too, like some score of other lives dear to literature or to science, was to be sacrificed under the car of our railway Juggernaut.

GROUP OF
ARCHEOLO-
GISTS AND
EXPLORERS.

REMOVAL,

AND ITS
CIRCUM-

In 1861, he published, from another Nitrian manuscript, EUSEBIUS' History of the Martyrs in Palestine. Early in 1863, he succeeded the late Beriah BOTFIELD in the Chair THE of the Oriental Translation Fund. On the twenty-ninth of May, of the same year, a railway accident' inflicted upon him such cruel injuries as entailed a protracted and painful illness of twelve months, and ended-to our loss, but to his great gain—in his lamented death, on the seventeenth of June, 1864.

He died where he was born, and was buried with his fathers. The writer of these poor memorial lines upon an admirable man well remembers the delight he used to express (thirty years ago) whenever it was in his power to revisit his birthplace, and knows that the delight was shared with the humblest of its inhabitants. Dr. CURETON was one of those genuine men who (in the true and best sense of the words) are not respecters of persons. He had a frank, not a condescending, salutation for the lowliest ac

STANCES.

« ElőzőTovább »