The old Grecian Theatre in the City Road was the nursery of many members of the theatrical profession, and authors too. Two well-known members of the Savage Club, Merritt and Pettitt, were writers of the common stuff necessary for the melodramas of the kind connected with their names. Merritt would have made an equal fortune if exhibited as the original fat boy in "Pickwick," or as a prize baby at a show. I suppose my readers are aware that it is not necessary to be a baby in order to be exhibited as one, for I recollect, in my Bohemian days, going down to Woolwich Gardens when the famous William Holland was manager of them, and accidentally strolling into a tent outside of which was a placard, "The Largest Baby in the World! 6d." I was not expected,--and the "Baby" was walking about in his baby-clothes, with little pink bows on his shoulders, smoking a horrible black clay pipe. He was the dwarf policeman in Holland's pantomime in the winter-time! [Illustration: "ANOTHER GAP IN OUR RANKS."] Merritt would have made a capital prize baby. He was tall, very stout, and possessed of a perfectly hairless, baby's face and a squeaky little voice. I shall never forget a prize remark this transpontine author made in the Savage Club, when an editor rushed in and said, "Have you heard the news? Carlyle is dead!" Merritt rose, and putting his hand on his chest, squeaked out, "Another gap in our ranks!" [Illustration: "JOPE."] A peculiar figure in Bohemia in those old days was "J." Pope, known as "Jope," brother of the late celebrated K.C. Jo was nearly as large as his brother, the well-known legal luminary, and Paul Merritt rolled into one, and wore his black wide-awake on the back of his pleasing, intelligent head. I saw him one sultry autumn evening leaning against a lamp-post in Chancery Lane to take breath. "Hullo, Pope, where are you going?" "My dear boy, let me lean on you a minute. I'm going up to the Birkbeck--to lecture--to lecture on 'Air, and How We Breathe!'" As a contrast to the popular Doctor was a wit more popularly known, H. J. Byron--as thin as the proverbial lamp-post. Of course the stories about Byron would fill a volume, but there is one that is always worth repeating, and that is his reply to a vulgar and obtrusive stranger who met him at Plymouth, and said to him, "Mr. Byron, I've 'ad a walk _h_all round the 'Oe." "Yes, old chap, and the next time you have a walk I advise you to walk all round the H." [Illustration: H. J. BYRON.]