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, 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. [Sidenote: DR. CURETON’S PUBLICATIONS IN SYRIAC, AND IN ARABIC LITERATURE.] 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,[35] that they were less angry with their opponents for withstanding the truth, than for doubting their own claims to be the channels and the champions of Truth. To his dying day, CURETON owned himself to be a learner—even in Syriac.