Lind) to the violent delights of controversy. One of the correspondents, whom the boy thus lured into profitless disputation, is said to have threatened him with a flogging from Dr. Keate; a threat that is said to have determined the Etonian henceforth to approach strangers under cover of a false name and address. Had the threat been carried out and the flogging given, the boy would have taken no more than he deserved for his bad manners. To Dr. Lind the poet was also indebted for his earliest lessons in Free Thought on matters pertaining to religion. Hogg is a good authority for this statement. Having thus sown the seeds of religious scepticism in the mind of his young friend, this exemplary physician left them to grow in a congenial soil. It does not appear that the doctor ever troubled himself to observe the consequences of his action in this matter, after his pupil left Eton. Nor does it appear that, after leaving Eton, Shelley ever troubled himself to visit, or correspond with, the virtuous sage to whom he declared himself so deeply indebted. For good or evil it cannot be questioned the boy of tender age was influenced in no slight degree by the tutor who educated him to write false epistles, to curse his father, and to repudiate Christianity. On finding themselves disposed to regard the 'egotisms' of the Shelleyan poems as passages of veracious autobiography, readers should correct the tendency to error by remembering, how the hard-swearing Windsor doctor was idealized into the virtuous hermit of _Laon and Cythna_ and the no less virtuous philosopher of _Prince Athanase_; how the boy (the poet's former self), who delighted in the doctor's profane and scurrilous utterances, was idealized into the young Prince whose heart harboured 'nought of ill,' whose 'gentle, yet aspiring mind,' was alike remarkable for justice, innocence, and various learning; and how, in course of time, the poet believed so completely all his fanciful pen had written to the Doctor's honour, that he used to speak of him as an example of wise, stately, and virtuous old age. According to words, spoken by the poet to his second wife, Dr. Lind's benevolence and dignified demeanour were qualified by youthful ardour. His locks were white, his eyes glowed with supernatural expressiveness, his countenance and mien were eloquent of amiability. 'I owe to that man,' Shelley used to ejaculate, 'far, ah! far more than I owe to my father; he loved me, and I never shall forget our long talks, when he breathed the kindest toleration and the purest wisdom.' In this strain Shelley used to talk of the man who taught him to curse his own father,--of the man whom he would have remembered only as a profane old reprobate, had he been less completely the victim of his own delusive fancy.