Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 2).djvu/366

330 vicar had caused it to be removed, for the person who slept beneath was only the black servant, and the stone itself had been surreptitiously introduced into the churchyard by some person of waggish propensities.

It was through Lord Lansdowne that the acquaintance between Bentham and Dumont was formed. The first notice of Dumont occurs in Bentham's works in 1788. Romilly had sent the former some of Bentham's works the MSS. of which were in French, under the title of "un ami inconnu." Dumont offered to rewrite portions, and superintend the publication of the whole, saying that the author was worthy of serving the cause of liberty. Shortly afterwards Dumont was invited to Bowood and became a constant visitor. For a long time a room in the house was known by his name.

Amongst other persons of whom Bentham formed an unfavourable opinion was Priestley, whom he accused of being cold and assuming, and of pretending to have made discoveries which were no discoveries at all. Their acquaintance however did not originate at Bowood, for in 1781 the connection which has been described in a previous chapter was terminated. During his residence at Bowood, Priestley had exercised a general supervision over the care and education of Lord Fitzmaurice and Mr. William Petty, who were being brought up under the immediate care of Mr. Jervis, a Nonconformist minister. Mr. William Petty died in 1778, and Lord Fitzmaurice was now growing up. To the former Priestley was peculiarly attached. He speaks of him as having made attainments in knowledge far beyond anything he had known at his age. In connection with his death, a story is told which is not an unfair instance of the manner in which ghost stories, and the evidence for them, are invented.

It came to be asserted that the ghost of Mr. Petty had appeared to Mr. Alsop, a Calne doctor, on the night of his decease. Mr. Petty, so the story ran, caught cold,