Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Olde Cambridge

[33] to madness. Longfellow regards with amused interest the discovery that N. P. Willis, in 1840, had earned by his pen annually ten thousand dollars, while Longfellow himself says, “I wish I had made ten hundred;” but it did not inspire him with the wish to do Willis's work of gossip, only with a desire to keep his own method. Lowell was never rich, nor was Holmes, but they lived within their means. Even Longfellow's salary in 1834 was but fifteen hundred dollars, although in later life his income became ample. There was nothing pharisaical in this moderation, nor did either of these poets deal harshly with persons of the Harold Skimpole race who hovered around them, as about all those who have incurred the imputation of success in their trade, whatever it be. Any lack of interest pertaining to the names of Cambridge bards for this reason must be endured; there have been many persons in our literature to whom no such despicable habits of abstinence belonged, and who found a loftier philosophy in Pistol's “Base is the slave that pays.”

And the other point which seems noticeable