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

Chapter XX. — High Commissioner in South Africa: — Second Term—continue

page 132

Chapter XX.
High Commissioner in South Africa:
Second Term—continue

The Library Founder.

None of the acquisitive passions is so respectable as the avidity of collecting books. It is pre-eminently the scholar's passion. These are his quarry, his mines of Golconda, his Kimberley diamond fields, where he will find who knows what massive jewel or, in any case, the solid substance of his erudition. The wife of his bosom may grumble, as Lady Hamilton gently repined when her helluo librorum carted home fresh additions to the stores of which the philosopher made so little visible use. Even the literary worker who makes no pretensions to learning, and who cares less for the form than for the intrinsic utility of the volumes he uses, is pleased when he picks up for a few shillings a rare treatise of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. But these are only amateurs, timorous paddlers in deep waters, while men with tastes, curiosity, and means set out in quest of rare old editions, or have agents in many countries. Thus equipped and thus advised, in a few years they may gather huge or valuable collections with which to feast their own eyes, while they feast the eyes of others. Then, when they die, they bequeath them to their descendants, like the Earls Spencer, or to a college, as did Victor Cousin to the Sorbonne. Now and then, but far seldomer, such a connoisseur may part with his hoards in his lifetime. What motive then governs him? Love of praise perhaps, but also an honest desire to diffuse the benefits of erudition and the materials of research. Such mixed motives we may conceive to have animated Grey when he decided to present to the Cape the splendid accumulation of books and manuscripts he had been getting together during a page 133good many years—nearly twenty, lie himself stated in the preface to the second edition of his Polynesian Mythology.

Unfortunate Allocation.

In the same preface Grey confesses that, in depositing at Capetown a large collection of volumes and MSS. relating to the Polynesian languages, mythology, and traditions, he "must seem to have acted injudiciously." The defence he makes is that at the time he made the donation he was residing at the Cape and that he hoped, in conjunction with Dr. Bleek, the librarian, who had come to the Cape on a philological mission, to work on the philological and mythological portions of the collection, especially those relating to New Zealand. He had apparently quite forgotten that he had ceased to reside at the Cape and was then residing in New Zealand. Not till some months after he had entered on a second term as Governor of New Zealand did he offer to present the collection to the Cape Library. The books were, moreover, no longer in Capetown, but in England. The whole narrative makes his action appear worse than injudicious. It was an act of folly to send that fine collection of Polynesian literature to Capetown, where it could only rot on the shelves, and deprive of it New Zealand, where alone it could be studied by experts. It looked like a vindictive act. It was an ominous beginning to a term of administration that was to be brought to an end by a virtual recall.

We can forgive him for depositing at Capetown the 415 publications and MSS. in or relating to 78 African languages; but the 40 books in or on West Australian dialects should have been deposited, if not in London or Oxford, Paris or Berlin, then at (Australian) Perth. The 42 works in or on the various Fijian dialects, the four on or in the dialect of Rotuma Island, the many more on other Polynesian tongues, and above all, as already said, the Kohinoor of the collection, the 524 volumes and MSS., containing poems, legends, translations, letters, grammars, and vocabularies in or from the Maori page 134language should have been placed in Wellington or Auckland. It is impossible to exaggerate the injury thus done to Philology. All the great Maori scholars of New Zealand—Colenso, Maunsell, White, Grey himself—have passed away without having an opportunity of using the treasures he had gathered. The chance of finding men to edit them who had themselves spoken with the old chiefs and tohungas from whose lips they had been taken down has passed away with them and can never recur. It was an irreparable blunder.

Bibliographic Treasures.

The other treasures thus buried at the extremity of a continent, likewise away from the scholars who could use them, are not unica, but they could have been far more profitably placed elsewhere. They consist of 53 MSS., in the Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Hebrew languages. Twenty-four works belong to the fifteenth century—such a collection as probably no other library south of the Line can boast of; and 60 are of the sixteenth century. One hundred were published within fifty years of the invention of printing, and these include an English translation of the Polychronicon, printed by Caxton in 1482. I said just now that the Library contained no unicum, but Grey claimed that the copy of the first folio of Shakspere there is the only complete copy. The MSS. are remarkable. There are no fewer than 120 ranging from the tenth to the fifteenth century, on vellum and illuminated, and in eight languages. Two of them are Dantean (what would not Signor del Balco or Signor D'Ovidio give to examine these?), several of Petrarch, one the earliest edition of the Roman de la Rose, and a Flemish translation of Mandeville's Travels. There are 50 chap-books, so precious to historians, and there are 42 works published by or attributed to Defoe. One great division of literature which he never forgot is splendidly represented. There are 374 Bibles or parts of the Bible in 160 languages, and there was no portion of the collection, perhaps, of which he was more proud. Two or three thousand manuscript letters—a passion with him to the page 135end of his days—adorn it. Among them are some letters of Cromwell, which Grey offered to Carlyle, but the wearied editor sorrowfully admitted his unwillingness to unhoop his cask. As we write, every line increases our regret that for so many years such rarities and such treasures have been or will yet be lost to the world.

A Great Bibliography.

Only the catalogue is accessible. By a piece of good fortune, on a par with the splendid gift, a German scholar had come to South Africa on a philological mission, or it may be, like a well-known New Zealand geologist, on a mission of his own, and was transformed into a philologist. With some aid from Grey, a virtuoso rather than a connoisseur in letters, Bleek compiled a catalogue of the collection that is a masterpiece of its kind. The arrangement is detailed and scientific; the description full and exact. The notes are invaluable, and they incorporate original information of importance. In the opinion of an authority the catalogue is "virtually a handbook of African, Australian, and Polynesian philology." How exhaustive it is will appear from the fact that it gives an account of 198 publications and manuscripts (the bulk of them Maori) in the Grey Library at Capetown.

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 page 136less 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.