e drops of gold about this time, and his
half-hours ingots, in the estimation of others, I had reason to
know,--of others, too, among the foremost celebrities of the age. Hence,
though he gave capital dinners, it was one of the rarest things in the
world for a stranger to be seen at his table. The curious and the
inquisitive stood no chance; and men of the highest rank were constantly
refused the introductions they sought.

"Anne, if the Duke of Sussex calls, I am not at home," said he one day
to his housekeeper: nobody ever knew why.

And there were hundreds of distinguished men, otherwise well-informed,
who believed in Jeremy Bentham, afar off, somewhat as others do in the
heroes of Ossian, or in their great Scandinavian prototypes, Woden and
Thor. If to be met with at all, it was only along the tops of mountains,
where "mist and moonlight mingle fitfully."

For myself, I can truly say, that, of those I met with, who talked most
freely about him, and who wrote as if well acquainted, not only with his
works, but with the man himself, there was not one in fifty who had ever
set eyes on him or knew where to look for the "Hermitage," while the
fiftieth could not tell me whether he was an Englishman or Frenchman by
birth, (most of his writings on jurisprudence being written by him in
French,) nor whether he was living or dead.

Nevertheless, they were full of anecdotes. They went with the scoffers,
and quoted Sydney Smith and "Blackwood," while "the world's dread laugh"
made them shy of committing themselves to any decided opinion. But if
Bentham was a myth, surely Dumont was not, and the shadow might well be
allowed to prove the substance; and yet they persisted in believing the
most extravagant inventions, and the drollest, without investigation or
misgiving.

And even I,--I, myself,--though familiar with his works, both in French
and English, was so much influenced by the mystery about him, and by the
stories I heard of him, and by the flings I saw in the leading journals,
that I was betrayed into writing as follows in "Blackwood," about a year
before I first met Mr. Bentham, notwithstanding my profound convictions
of his worth and greatness, and my fixed belief that he was cruelly
misunderstood and shamefully misrepresented, and that his "Morals and
Legislation" and his "Theory of Rewards and Punishments" would change
the jurisprudence of the world, as they certainly have done:--

"Setting aside John Locke's Cons