"If I can but testify to you and the world how truly I admire and esteem you, I shall be quite satisfied." And, in dedicating his work to him, he expresses himself thus:-- "My praise could add nothing to your well-earned and firmly-established fame, and with my most hearty admiration of your talents, and delight in your conversation, you are already acquainted." I have already said that he almost wished to be eclipsed, that Moore might shine the more prominently. "The best way to make the public 'forget' me is to remind them of yourself. You can not suppose that I would ask you or advise you to publish, if I thought you would _fail_. I really have no literary envy; and I do not believe a friend's success ever sat nearer another's heart, than yours does to the wishes of mine. It is for _elderly gentlemen_ to 'bear no brother near,' and can not become our disease for more years than we may perhaps number. I wish you to be out before Eastern subjects are again before the public." He meanwhile got Murray to use his influence to point out to Moore the best time for appearing. "I need not say, that I have his success much at heart; not only because he is my friend, but something much better--a man of great talent, of which he is less sensible than, I believe, any even of his enemies. If you can so far oblige me as to step down, do so," etc. Lord Byron had never ceased to press Moore to publish his poem. When it appeared, he wrote to him from Venice:-- "I am glad that we are to have it at last. Really and truly, I want you to make a great hit, if only out of self-love, because we happen to be old cronies; and I have no doubt you will--I am sure you _can_. But you are, I'll be sworn, in a devil of a pucker, and I am not at your elbow, and Rogers _is_. I envy him; which is not fair, because he does _not envy any body_.[31] Mind you send to me--that is, make Murray send--the moment you are forth." "I feel as anxious for Moore as I could do for myself, for the soul of me; and I would not have him succeed otherwise than splendidly, which I trust he will do." And then, writing again to Murray, from Venice (June, 1817):-- "It gives me great pleasure to hear of Moore's success, and the more so that I never doubted that it would be complete. Whatever good you can tell me of him and his poem will be most acceptable; I feel very anxious indeed to receive it. I hope that he is as happy in his fame and reward as I wish him to be; for I know no one who deserves both more, if any so much." A month later he added:-- "I have got the sketch and extracts from 'Lalla Rookh'--which I humbly suspect will knock up ..." (he intended himself), "and show young gentlemen that something more than having been across a camel's hump is necessary to write a good Oriental tale. The plan, as well as the extracts I have seen, please me very much indeed, and I feel impatient for the whole." And, lastly, after he had received it:--