In reply to Byron’s attack on him in _English Bards_, Moore had sent the satirist a letter on January 1, 1810, preparatory to a challenge unless reparation were offered. Fortunately the note did not reach Byron until his landing in England, when the Irishman’s wrath had cooled and he himself was in a repentant mood. A short correspondence led to the meeting of the two, with Campbell and Rogers, at the house of the latter in November, 1811, where the difference was amicably adjusted. On December 11th Byron invited Moore to visit him at Newstead, and though Moore found it impossible to accept, the poets soon became good friends.[152] It was not until the formation of this friendship that Byron began to take any active part in current politics; during the rest of his life, however, he was linked with Moore as a satirist on the Whig side and was, to a considerable extent, influenced by the latter’s work.[153] As we have seen, Moore had failed in his attempts at formal satire; but in 1812, shortly after his acquaintance with Byron began, he commenced his persistent and stinging gibes at the Regent and his coterie. On February 13, 1812, the Prince sent his notorious letter to the Duke of York, asking for Whig support, and Moore’s admirable verse parody was soon in private circulation. This was one of the earliest, and certainly one of the most delightful, of the many brilliant satires with which Moore, for years, amused the town. In March, 1813, under the pen-name of “Thomas Brown, the Younger,” he published _Intercepted Letters; or the Two-penny Postbag_, in which he borrowed the structure of the anonymous _Groans of the Talents_ by pretending to have discovered a number of letters from various celebrated personages. Moore’s letters, eight in all, are in rapid anapestic and octosyllabic metres, and are unusually bright and piquant, full of allusions to the scandalous gossip of court life. Although Moore continued his satires in numerous verses of a similar type, he never excelled this first success. In March, 1812, Byron joined Moore in assailing the Regent. In the Whig _Morning Chronicle_ for March 7th was printed a short epigram without a signature, called _A Sympathetic Address to a Young Lady_. The lines read as follows:-- “Weep, daughter of a Royal line, A Sire’s disgrace, a realm’s decay; Ah! happy! if each tear of thine Could wash a father’s fault away! Weep--for thy tears are Virtue’s tears-- Auspicious to these suffering isles; And be each drop, in future years, Repaid thee by thy people’s smiles.”