FIGURES IN "THE BONDMAN" AND "THE
MANXMAN."]

"One day Rossetti suggested that, instead of reading these novels
alone, I should read them aloud to him. From that day on, night after
night, for months and months, I used to read to him. I read Fielding
and Smollett, Richardson, Radcliffe, 'Monk' Lewis, Thackeray, and
Dickens, under a running fire of comment and criticism from Rossetti.
It was terrible labor, this reading for hours night after night, till
dawn came and I could drag myself wearily upstairs to bed. But it was
a very useful study, and this is indeed the debt which I owe to
Rossetti."

Rossetti died on Easter Day, 1882, at the seashore, near Margate, in
Hall Caine's arms. It shows the extent of their friendship that, the
bungalow being crowded that night, Caine readily offered to sleep in
the death-chamber. "It is Rossetti," he said.

HALL CAINE'S FIRST NOVEL.

Hall Caine then returned to London, and whilst continuing to
contribute to various papers, and notably to the "Liverpool Mercury,"
to which he was attached for years, he wrote his "Recollections of
Rossetti," which brought him forty pounds (two hundred dollars) and
attracted some attention in literary circles, without, however,
enhancing his reputation with the general public. This was followed by
"Cobwebs of Criticism," the title he gave to a collection of critical
essays, originally delivered as lectures. This book did nothing for
him in any way. All this while he had been hankering after
novel-writing, and, though Rossetti had always urged him to become a
dramatist, he had also encouraged him to write novels, advising him to
become the novelist of Manxland. "There is a career there," he used to
say, "for nothing is known about this land." The two friends had
discussed Hall Caine's plot of "The Shadow of a Crime," which Rossetti
had found "immensely powerful but unsympathetic," and it was with this
novel that Hall Caine began his career as a writer of fiction. He had
married in the meanwhile, and with forty pounds (two hundred dollars)
in the bank and an assured income of a hundred (five hundred dollars)
a year from the "Liverpool Mercury," he went with his wife to live in
a small house in the Isle of Wight, to write his book. "I labored over
it fearfully," he says, "but not so much as I do now over my books. At
that time I only wanted to write a thrilling tale. Now what I want in
my novels is a spiritual intent, a problem of life." "The Shado