Life of Sir George Grey: Governor, High commissioner, and Premier. An Historical Biography.

Scholarly Homage

Scholarly Homage.

The Catalogue was the best advertisement the Library could have received. To foreign scholars it must have been as the waters of Tantalus. They were not slow to make their acknowledgements. Max Müller hesitated over an article for the Quarterly Review, which Grey seems to have suggested to him, but he publicly stated that "Sir George Grey's services to the science of language have hardly been sufficiently appreciated as yet, and" held that "the Linguistic Library which he founded at the Cape places him of right by the side of Sir Thomas Bodley." But the Bodleian is used, whereas the Grey Library is useless. Baron Bunsen made a no less glowing recognition of the "rich treasures," "the enlightened and indefatigable researches and collections," Grey had "heaped on all scholars of African ethnology and comparative philology." The Bonn philologist, Lassen, was hardly less laudatory, and Professor Sayce was duly recognisant. The Catalogue, taken by itself and also as the symbol of a great collection, will be one of Grey's most enduring monuments.