Who was Dr. James Lind, chiefly famous (and infamous) as Shelley's chief instructor in the science and art of cursing? Drawing her facts from 'authentic sources,' Lady Shelley speaks of him as 'an erudite scholar and amiable old man, much devoted to chemistry, at whose house Shelley passed the happiest of his Eton hours.' 'He was a physician,' the lady adds, 'and also one of the tutors.' Recording that Dr. James Lind bore 'a name well known among the professors of medical science,' Mrs. Shelley has also put it on record that 'the Doctor often stood by to befriend and support the persecuted, and that her husband never, in after-life, mentioned his name without love and reverence.' Shelley himself used to say of this amiable and erudite old man, 'He loved me, and I shall never forget our long talks, where he breathed the spirit of the kindest tolerance and the purest wisdom.' Without alleging that he speaks from other and better authorities than the poet, his widow and his daughter-in-law, Mr. Rossetti says of Shelley and his peculiar patron, 'The only official person whom he really liked there' (_i.e._ Eton) 'was Dr. James Lind of Windsor, a physician, chemist, and tutor, and a man of erudition, who superintended the youth's scientific studies.' Had he only deserved half the praise lavished upon him, Dr. Lind would have been a man of extraordinary goodness. But, unfortunately, it is only too clear that he was a mischievous, malignant, hard-swearing old man, who gained great influence over the Etonian Shelley, and used it hurtfully. Possibly Lady Shelley and later biographers were justified in writing of this bad old man, as though he held a tutorial office on the Eton establishment; but without being in a position to speak positively to their discredit, the present writer ventures to entertain a doubt of their accuracy on this matter, and to give Dr. James Lind the full benefit of the doubt. If the Doctor was one of the Eton tutors, he was even a worse man than he is declared in these pages; for in that case the man, who encouraged Shelley to study chemistry in defiance of the recent prohibition, and to persist in his contumacy to the masters of the school, was guilty of encouraging the boy to rebel against authority, which he was bound by honour and official obligations to maintain. The grey-headed tutor, who secretly stimulated the boy's rebellious spirit, and applauded him for it, was wanting in loyalty, and not guiltless of treachery, to his comrades in tutorial service. But in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, it may be assumed that the amiable and extremely benevolent old gentleman, who taught a fifteen-or sixteen-years-old boy to curse his father, was under no especial obligation to have a care for the lad's moral health, apart from the general duty of every man to encourage what is virtuous, and discountenance what is vicious in all persons, over whom he has any influence.