Their friendship began, drolly enough, as has been already mentioned, out of a cartel resulting from another challenge. In 1809, Moore saw _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, and had no special cause to quarrel with the attack upon his own work. Little, "The young Catullus of his day, As sweet, but as immoral, in his lay," might regard the attack as verging on a tribute; and indeed Little's poems were among Byron's earliest favourites and models in verse. But Moore was choleric; he did not like to hear himself entitled the "melodious advocate of lust"; and further on he came upon a passage which touched him on a sensitive point. His abortive duel with Jeffrey furnished too obvious material for the satirist to miss--above all, when Jeffrey was the special mark--and accordingly Moore found the following reference to it:-- "Can none remember that eventful day, That ever glorious, almost fatal fray, When Little's leadless pistol met the eye, And Bow Street's myrmidons stood laughing by?" A note was appended, stating that, in the duel at Chalk Farm, "on examination, the balls of the pistols were found to have evaporated." The satire being anonymous, Moore, though sufficiently vexed, took no steps; but when a second edition was issued with Byron's name, he wrote from Ireland to the author, saying that in the note "the lie was given" to his own public statement, published in the _Times_ concerning the duel, and demanding to know whether Byron would "avow the insult." This letter, as Moore soon learnt, had not reached its address, for Byron had gone abroad; but he was told that Hodgson had undertaken to forward it. Nothing more was heard, and Moore let things rest till a year and a half later, when Byron returned from abroad. Moore had in the meantime married, and was about to become a father; he was therefore, as he admits, inclined to be conciliatory, but none the less determined to push the matter to an explanation. Referring to the previous letter, which he assumed to have miscarried, he re-stated his grievance in writing, but then continued:--