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BOOK III,
Chap. IV.
ANOTHER

GROUP OF
ARCHEOLO-

GISTS AND

EXPLORERS.

DR. CURE

TON'S PUB

LICATIONS

IN SYRIAC
AND IN

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 pubARABIC lished 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

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* 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

CIETY.

Within three years of the publication of his Ignatius, ARCHEOLOCURETON gave to the world his precious edition of the 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 ORIENTAL discoveries amongst the spoils of the Nitrian monasteries, TEXT SOand 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.'

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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

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 GROUP OF appointment to his Westminster parish and canonry. No GISTS AND 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.

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ARCHEOLO

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.

BOOK III,
Chap. IV.
ANOTHER

GROUP OF
ARCHEOLO-
GISTS AND

EXPLORERS.

THE ARCHE

OLOGICAL

EXPLORA

TIONS IN THE

LEVANT.

quaintances of youthful days. And those lowliest were not among the least glad to see his face again at his holidayvisits; nor were they among the least sorrowful to see it, when it bore the fatal, but now to most of us quite familiar, traces of victimism to the mammon-cult of our railway directors.

Just as we have to go very far back indeed in the history of the Manuscript Department of the British Museum, in order to find an accession quite as notable as are-taking them as a whole-the manuscripts of the Nitrian monasteries, so have we also to do in the history of the several Departments of Antiquities, in order to find any parallel to the acquisitions of monuments of art and archæology made during the thirty years between 1840 and 1870. In point of variety of interest, in truth, there is no parallel at all to be found.

In archæology, however-as in scientific discovery, or in mechanical invention-every great burst of new light will be seen, if we look closely enough, to have had its remote precursive gleams, howsoever faint or howsoever little noticed they may have been.

Austen Henry LAYARD, for example, is a most veritable 'discoverer.' Nevertheless, the researches of LAYARD link themselves with those of Claudius RICH, and with the still earlier glimpses, and the mere note-book jottings, of Carsten NIEBUHR, as well as with the explorations of LAYARD'S contemporary and most able French fellow-investigator, Monsieur BOTTA. In like manner, Nathan DAVIS is the undoubted disinterrer of old Carthage, but the previous labours of the Italian canon and archæologist SPANO, of Cagliari, and those of the French geographers DE DREUX and DUREAU DE LA MALLE, imperfect as they all were,

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