his friend Gilbert's eccentric comedy, Engaged. He continued acting until 1882, when ill health forced him to retire. Not surprisingly, Byron achieved his greatest acting successes in timing of the delivery of his own witty lines. The Times explained that "in such parts as Gibson Greene in Married in Haste, a self-possessed, observant, satirical, well-bred man of the world, [Byron] was beyond the reach of rivalry. To ease and grace of manner he united a peculiar aptitude for the delivery of the good things he put into his own mouth." Byron continued to write prose comedies with the ambitious semi-autobiographical Cyril's Success (1868), The Upper Crust (starring Toole), Uncle Dick's Darling (1870, starring Henry Irving), An English Gentleman (1871, starring Edward Sothern), Weak Woman (1875, starring Marion Terry), and his greatest success, Our Boys (1875–79, Vaudeville Theatre). With 1,362 performances in its original production, Our Boys set the record for the longest-running play in history and held it for almost two decades. It was also much revived, especially in America. From 1876 to 1879, he wrote several successful burlesques for the Gaiety Theatre, London, such as a burlesque of Dion Boucicault's Don Caesar de Bazan called Little Don Caesar de Bazan, and The Gaiety Gulliver (1879). Also during that period, he edited the humour magazine Mirth. In 1878, he co-wrote a highly successful charity pantomime, The Forty Thieves, together with Robert Reece, W. S. Gilbert and F. C. Burnand. In 1880, four volumes of his plays were published, with fourteen plays in each book. After 1880, as his health greatly declined, so did Byron's playwriting output. The popular three-act comedy The Guv'nor, credited to "E. G. Lankester" and first performed in the 1880s, has been attributed to Byron on stylistic grounds. Byron is described by Jim Davis in the introduction to his 1984 collection, Plays by H. J. Byron, as the most prolific playwright of the mid-Victorian period, as he produced over 150 dramatic pieces. The Times called Byron a master of "genial wit and humour". It also commented that "The secret of his success... lay chiefly in his dialogue, which is seldom otherwise than neat, pointed and amusing. He fires verbal shots in such rapid succession that one laugh has scarcely died away when another is raised. In the delineation of character, too, he is often extremely happy". By 1874, he was showing symptoms of tuberculosis, which caused his