[65] Dr. Lowell’s course in this matter was characteristic of his fine sense of honor. Previous to the ordination of his colleague, Dr. Bartol, 1 March, 1837, he received from the West Church Society a salary of $2000 a year. At a meeting of the proprietors held 22 April, 1849, a letter was read from Dr. Lowell, in which he says: “It was always a favorite object with me, in the event of the settlement of a colleague pastor, to resign the whole of my salary, or at most, to retain only a small portion of it, that you might have less hesitation in calling upon me for the services I might be able to render you.” It was with great reluctance, he added, that he then came to the conclusion it was his duty to accede to the request of the proprietors and retain all the salary he had been accustomed to receive; now he could do so no longer, and he insisted respectfully on an arrangement by which he should resign a quarter of his salary, “with the purpose at no distant day, if Providence permit, of resigning a further sum.” In 1854 Dr. Lowell resigned the whole of his salary, but the Society declined to accept the proposal. [66] “I do not blame Foster or Philbrick or Jackson for not being satisfied with me; but, on the other hand, I thank God that he has gradually taught me to be quite satisfied with _them_.”--_Letters_, i. 157. [67] Cornelius Matthews. [68] The greater part of this letter will be found in _Letters of James Russell Lowell_, i. 120. Copyright by Harper & Brothers, 1893. [69] The reference apparently is to Miss Fuller’s criticism of Lowell three years previously, in which she said: “His interest in the moral questions of the day has supplied the want of vitality in himself; his great facility at versification has enabled him to fill the ear with a copious stream of pleasant sound. But his verse is stereotyped: his thoughts sound no depth, and posterity will not remember him.”--_Papers on Literature and Art_, p. 308. [70] Briggs did not like Bryant, and in this he was abetted by Page, to whom Bryant at this time was sitting. Page was angry because, in the brief notice of Lowell’s _Poems_ which Bryant wrote, he commended only the “Morning Glory,” which was Mrs. Lowell’s, and because Bryant intimated that Lowell’s “To the Past” was suggested by a poem of his own with the same title. [71] This was the year of General Taylor’s nomination. [72] In a letter to me about the _Fable_ written in 1890, Lowell says: “Mr. Putnam, I believe, never discovered that the title-page was in metre, nor that it was in rhyme either. Mr. Norton told me the other day that he had a copy of some later edition (after Putnam had changed his place of business), in which the imprint was ‘G. P. Putnam, Astor (or something) Place.’ I don’t remember whether I knew of it at the time, but had I known, I should have let it pass as adding to the humor of the book.” The first title-page ended