Some crucial practical help came from Moscow University professor Nikolai Storozhenko. "Were it not for him, I would have died of hunger" Balmont later remembered. The professor accepted his essay on Percy Bysshe Shelley and in October 1892 introduced him to the authors of "Severny Vestnik", including Nikolay Minsky, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, and Zinaida Gippius, as well as the publisher Kuzma Soldatyonkov, who commissioned him to translate two fundamental works on the history of European literature. These books, published in 1894–1895, "fed me for three years, making it possible for me to fulfill all my poetic ambitions," Balmont wrote in 1922. All the while he continued to translate Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe. The lawyer and philanthropist, Prince Alexander Urusov, an expert in Western European literature, financed the publication of two of Poe's books, translated by Balmont. These translations are still held to be exemplary by modern Russian literary scholars. In 1894 Balmont met Valery Bryusov, who, impressed by the young poet's "personality and his fanatical passion for poetry," soon became his best friend.