Cureton William, Dd

Cureton William, D.D., an eminent English divine and Orientalist, was born in 1808, and educated at Christ Church, Oxford. He was ordained priest in 1834, and was for a time sub-librarian of the Bodleian. In 1837 he became assistant keeper of the MSS. in the British Museum, which post he retained till 1849, when he was appointed to a canonry of Westminster and to the attached rectorship of the parish of St. Margaret's. Two years before that date he had been appointed chaplain in ordinary to the queen. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Society, an honorary D.D. of Halle, corresponding member of the Institute of France, and member of the Asiatic Society of Paris, the Oriental Society of Germany, and many other Continental societies. These honors he owed to his great reputation as an Orientalist, and especially as a Syriac scholar. This reputation was formed by his publications while an official in the British Museum. His Corpus Ignatianum, an edition of an ancient Syriac version of the Epistles of St. Ignatius, with commentaries thereon, was published in 1845, and gave rise to an interesting controversy. Among his subsequent works were an edition of a palimpsest of parts of Homer found in an Eastern convent, and his Spicilegium Syriacum, published in 1855. He was understood to be engaged on some work connected with St. Matthew's Gospel at the time of his death, June 17, 1864.