The Sun.
London, England, 1864-06-30 00:00:00

The late Canon Cureton, D, D,, F,R,S,

By the death of Dr Cureton the world has lost a ripe and
accurate scholar. and the Church of England an earnest and
laborious minister. On the 29th of May, 1863, he met with
a severe railsVay accident while returning with his family
from Eastbourne, from the effects of which he never reco-
vered; every improvement was followed by a more severe
relapse, and he finally sank at 1 o'clock of the morning of
Friday, the 17th inst., in the 56th year of his age,
William Cureton was born at Westbury, in Shropshire,
in the year 1808, and was the second son of Mr William
Cureton, of that place, He was educated at the Free Gram-
mar School of Newport, in his native county, whence he
proceeded to Oxford with a Careswell Exhibition at the age
of 18. He had intended to join the University as a com-
moner, but his father having died about this time, leaving
the family property much embarrassed, he entered Christ
Church as a servitor, in order that his mother might enjoy
the full proceeds of his patrimony. In this act he displayed
that fiadePelidince, affectionate nature, and practical good-
ness which characterised him through life. He was a dili-
gent student, and graduated in 1830. He was ordained
deacon in 1831 by Dr Bagot, Bishop of Oxford, and priest
by Dr Murray, Bishop of Rochester, in 1832, He took the
degrees of Bachelor and Doctor of Di 7inity by accumulation
in 1858, having been previously created Doctor of Divinity
by an honorary diploma of the University of Halle. Dr
Gaisford, then Dean of Christ Church, who was much at-
tached to him,made him a chaplain of his college, and in 1834
introduced him to Dr Bandinel, the Bodlean Librarian, as a
good son and a fit person to be under-librarian. He con-
tinued in that post until 1837, when he succeeded Sir Fred.
Madden as assistant keeper of the manuscripts in the
British Museum. He was selected for his office on account
of his special acquaintance with Oriental languages, parti-
cularly Arable, to the study of which he had devoted him-
self from the year 1830, when he took his B.A. degree.
In the British Museum Dr Cureton found employment
suited to his tastes and studies, The duty assigned to him
was the preparation of a classed catalogue of the Arabic por-
tion of the collection. The first part of this work, com-
prising Christian writings and the divisions of Mahomedan
theology, jurisprudence, and history, and in which every
volume noticed was minutely described in Latin, was pub-
lished in the spring of 1846. Much also of the material for
the remainder of the catalogue had been prepared by him
before the year 1850, when he resigned his appointment.
But the preparation of this catalogue was not the most
important nor the most laborious of Dr Cureton's duties at
the British Museum. As early as the year 1841 his work
on the Arabic catalogue had been interrupted, through the
acquisition by the trustees of that institution of a very re-
markable collection of manuscripts in the Syriac language,
obtained through the agency of Dr. Tattam from the
Monastery of St. Mary Deipara, in the desert of Nitria or
Scete, not far from Cairo. This event furnished him with
materials for researches, at once varied and profound, in a
new field. On the arrival of the MSS.—the first portion
in 1841, the second in 1843—he threw himself heart and
soul into the study of the Syraic language and literature.
On him in the first instance devolved the task of classifying
the volumes, of gathering together, collating, and arranging
the numberless fragments and loose leaves of which the
Nitrian Collection consisted, and of drawing up a brief
summary of their contents for the catalogue of additional
MSS. in the Museum.
One of the first results of these labours was an article in

the Quarterly Review, No. cliii., December, 1845, giving

an account of the way in which the MSS. were procured,
and a rough sketch of their contents ; and in the same
year appeared the first edition of the ancient Syriac
version cf the epistle of St. Ignatius to St. Polycarp, tho
Ephesians, and the Romans. The views propounded by
Dr. Cureton,—that we have here the genuine epistles of
St. Ignatius in their original form ; that the previously-

known recensions of these three epistles are much altered
and interpolated ; and that all others ascribed to tha t
Father are suppositious—views such as these were cer-
tain to excite much controversy in the theological world.
Commenced by Wordsworth in the English Review, No.
viii., July, 1345, the strife was continued by Samuel Lee
(British Magazine, vol. xxx ), Bunsen, Baur, Ililgenfeld,
Denzinger, Hefele, Jacobson, and others, of whom the firs
two supported Cureton, while the rest combated his views.
Cureton himself took the field against Wordsworth in his
" Vindicias Ignatiante" (1846)—a calm but crushing refu-
tation of his opponent's allegation ,that the Syriac version
was a miserable epitome by an Eutychian heretic." The
year 1849 saw the publication of the " Corpus Ignatianum,"
an enlarged edition of the work of 1845, almost contempo-
raneously with which appeared Petermann'a edition of the
Ignatian epistles. Since then discussion has been continued
by Lipsius (1859) on the siie of Cureton, and Marx (1861)
on that of his opponents, and is not even yet brought to a
final settlement. Cureton, however, remained steadfast to
the views stated with such clearness and learning in the
" Corpus Ignatianum," and would, if his life had been
spared, have once again stepped fot ward to sum and con-
clude the controversy.

While the Ignatian controversy was at its height Dr
Cureton edited the test of a portion of the Syriao version
of the long-lost " Festal Letters of St. Athanasius," of
which he had been the fortunate discoverer. The preface
to these letters contain an interesting account of the Nitrian
Collection, more especially of a third portion, which reached
the Museum in 1847. These letters have been translated

into English by Burgess (1854), and form one of the vo-
lumes.of Pusey's Library of the Fathers. A German trans-
lation from the pen of the well-known Syrian scholar

Larsow appeared in 1852.
In 1851 Cureton edited for the trustees of the British
Museum the palimps eat fragments of the " Iliad of
Homer," contained yin the Nitrian MS., now numbered
" Add. 17, 210."

In 1853 there issued from the University Press of Oxford
an important contribution to our historical knowledge—the
third part of the " Ecclesiastical Ristory of John Bishop of
Ephesus," edited by Cureton, from the Add. MS. 14,640.
Of this he intended to publish a translation, but other
labours prevented hfm, and his wishes were carried

out by the ReV. R. Payne Smith, sub-librarian of the Bod-
leian Library, whose version appeared in 1860. There is
also a German translation by Schonfelder (1862).
Two years later this indefatigable scholar published his
"Spicilegium Syriacum," containing remains ascribed to
Bardesanes, Melito of Sardes, Ambrose, &c., with an Eng-
lish translation and notes. The first of those, called in the
MS. the "Book of the Laws of Countries," is the Syriac
original of the celebrated "Dialogue on Fate." A German
translation of it has been given by Men, in his work " Bar-
desanes von Edessa" (1863), who has shown that it is in
reality the production of a disciple of Batdesanes named
Philip. The second tract contained in the " Spicilegium" is,
in all probability, not the "Apology"of Melito, but, as Ewald
and Land have maintained, the treatise of that Father
7repi driecias. The third is the same, with some
modifications, as the AcCyor rpOr EXX,pas, which is
sometimes attributed to Justin Martyr.

In 1868 Cureton edited, perhaps, the most valuable of all
his works, and one which has given rise to scarcely less con-
troversy than the Ignatian Epistles, He discovered in the
Add. MS. 14,451, which belongs to the latter half of the
fifth century, the remains of an ancient recension of the
Syriac Gospels, differing notably from the ordinary Pehito
version. In his preface he dwelt on these divergencies,
more especially in the text of the Gospel of St. Matthew—
summed up the evidence in favour of the Hebrew original
no fact relating to
the
ethhatteteGroyspel,
of tthhaen
New Testament
perhaps,
Teetement
is more fully and
satisfactorily established ; and endeavour to prove that
this particular MS. represented the Hebrew far more
faithfully than the Peshito does—at least in the shape
it is generally known to European scholars, His views
have been warmly espoused by that able critic Dr. Tregel-
les. It was Dr. Cureton's intention to have returned in
after years to this subject, and made known additional evi-
dence which he had collected upon these points.
Three years later Cureton brought outtthe last work that
he was destined to finish—" The History of the Martyrs in
Palestine," by Eusebius of Caasarea, taken from the same
venerable MS. from which Dr S. Lee edited the Thophania
of that father.

The last years of his life were employed in completing a
work which he had announced in the prune to The Festal
Letters of St Athanasius, p. xxiii., note. The text and
part of the translation were printed at the time when he met
with the railway accident that ultimately caused his death.
Fortunately ho was able to finish the translation and notes
before his health altogether gave way; but the preface, in
which the results of the work were to have been summed
up, and his views regarding various questions stated, has we
fear never been written. According to his own statement
the book contains, among other things, " a considerable por-
tion of the,original Aramic document which Eusebius cites
as preserved in the archives of Edessa, and various passages
from it, quoted by several authors, with other testimonies,
which seem to be sufficient to establish the fact of the early
conversion of many of ihe inhabitants of that city,and among
them of the King himself, although his successors after-
wards relapsed into paganism,'!. The unwritten preface