Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Knowing well, however, that there is much in the life of nearly every man of letters, and in my own life in particular, that can be of little interest to the public, I made no attempt what ever to tell a detailed story of my early days, but confined my autobiographical fragment to an account of my literary relations, sometimes very intimate, sometimes very slight, always very im portant to me, with John Ruskin, R. D. Black more, Wilkie Collins, Robert Buchanan, T. E. Brown, Henry Irving, Tennyson and Gladstone, as well as the great and unhappy poet whose sad comradeship during his last dark days gave me an excuse for the majority of these pages. Nevertheless in eliminating my personal narra tive except so far as it concerned these large and lasting figures, I thought I might be pardoned if I began my book with a sketch of my childhood and youth in the Isle of Man, partly for the sake of the picture it must needs present of a curiously self-centred little community that was strangely out of touch and harmony with the rest of our kingdom as recently as half a century ago, and partly perhaps for such interest as it might pos sibly possess for some of the readers of the novels with which my name is associated.
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