Perhaps I failed to see the importance of his writings

Dale, PhD online, quotes charmingly from Lord Russell on Lady Welby, to the effect, words lightly adapted,

"Perhaps I failed to see the importance of her writings".

Meaning he perhaps ignored her.

Dale also quotes from Lyons who uses exactly the same word that Bennett uses in "Linguistic Behaviour": commonplace:

Lyons:

"long been a commonplace of non-philosophical treatments of meaning and communication"

that Grice takes up, as it were.

Dale comments:

"it is interesting to see Lyons noting Gardiner's anticipation of this important aspect of Oxford philosophy of language."

Agreed. But back to Russell. That pretty patronising reference to Lady Welby (whom we all love, and Peirce most) goes, as cited by Dale.

Dale does not quote from a popular book by Russell (that would be easy) but a charming obscure review of Ogden/Richards -- and note in passing that Dale is now credited in Richards/Ogden's reprint for Routledge).

Russell writes, perhaps charmingly:

"When, in youth, I learned what was called "philosophy"..., no one ever mentioned to me the question of "meaning". Later, I became aware of Lady Welby's work on the subject, but failed to take it seriously."

Peirce didn't. If Chapman is right about her interpretation of Grice's lecturing on Peirce, it seems that we should regard "Meaning" as a case of 'linguistic botanising'. Grice is obsessed with 'ordinary-language' statements of the form

"... means ..."

and while Grice fails to recognise Lady Welby's work explicitly, he at least discussed pretty thoroughly the earlier views of Peirce. So, the opinions, expressed by Peirce and cited by Dale, to the effect that Welby and himself were 'treading the same ground' are important. E.g. Peirce does detect that, before the work of Lady Welby, most remarks about 'meaning' had been "formalistic" -- whatever that means.

Grice was often criticised for being 'formalistic'. But he ceased to be so, when, if I may quote Grice rather freely, "of all people" Putnam pointed out that to him!