“Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice, “but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life.” But then Alice had never seen this title-page of a book by “Sholto Percy” which was never written, and of which _Death in London_ was to have been the title. The wood-block is a very beautiful one, cut by Mason, no doubt Abraham John, who engraved Cruikshank’s illustrations to _Tales of Humour and Gallantry_. “Sholto Percy” was the pen-name of Joseph Clinton Robertson, who, with Thomas Byerley, published the _Percy Anecdotes_, 1821–23. Their full pseudonyms were “Sholto and Reuben Percy, Brothers of the Benedictine Monastery, Mount Benger.” The anecdotes were published in forty-one parts, at half-a-crown a-piece, before the close of the year 1823, and, of these, two hundred and sixty thousand copies were sold during the four years of issue! What number subsequent editions {155} have run to it is impossible to conjecture. The title of the book had its origin from the Percy Coffee-House in Rathbone Place, which the collaborators frequented. They also compiled _London, or Interesting Memorials of its Rise, Progress, and Present State_. 3 vols. 1823. In the dedication of this last work to George IV. we find facsimile signatures of the two “Brothers.” That of “Sholto Percy,” the author of the book which was evidently projected but never published, tallies with that on the title-page here reproduced. From the fact that Reuben’s signature is absent we gather that, for some reason or other, the collaboration had come to an end. At any rate nothing more is heard of the partnership, nor indeed was anything else published under one or other of these _noms-de-plume_. And although I received various communications from strangers upon the subject of the bibliographical curiosities dealt with in the _Good Words_ article, no light was thrown upon this perplexing title-page. Suppressed, therefore, it doubtless was, because it had no reason to be anything else, and remains a rather pathetic memorial of the gifted {156} artist and the author whose projected enterprise was perchance cut short by one of the forms of the Dread Enemy here portrayed.