As a result of these preliminary plans, Mr. Underwood was dispatched in June to England to secure the aid of English authors, and Mr. Lowell was asked to take the position of editor. Lowell had already taken an active part in creating an interest in the venture among writers. Underwood had turned to him as his most important ally, and Longfellow records in his diary, 29 April, 1857: “Lowell was here last evening to interest me in a new Magazine to be started in Boston by Phillips and Sampson. I told him I would write for it if I wrote for any Magazine.” Dr. Holmes christened the magazine, and Lowell, from the first, reckoned upon him for contributions. In 1885, when Dr. Holmes was resuming his regular prose contributions after a long intermission, he wrote in the introductory paper:[117] “He (Mr. Lowell) thought there might be something in my old portfolio which would be not unacceptable in the new magazine. I ... wondered somewhat when Mr. Lowell urged me with such earnestness to become a contributor, and so, yielding to a pressure which I could not understand, and yet found myself unable to resist, I promised to take a part in the new venture, as an occasional writer in the columns of the magazine.” Lowell, reading this number of the _Atlantic_ in London, wrote to Dr. Holmes: “The first number of your New Portfolio whets my appetite. Let me make one historical correction. When I accepted the editorship of the _Atlantic_, I made it a condition precedent that you were the first contributor to be engaged. Said I not well?”[118] Emerson apparently had asked if the contributions were to be signed, for Lowell wrote him, 14 September, 1857: “All the articles will be anonymous, but you will be quite helpless, for your name is written in all kinds of self-betraying anagrams over yours. But as far as we are concerned there shall be as strict honor as the XIXth century allows of. Your wishes shall govern the position of the article [‘Illusions,’ in the first number], though I should have preferred to give it the precedence. I am afraid that where that is will be the head of the table, whether or no.”