"And we ashamed of him," added Johnson,
smiling.

Boswell had to bear some jokes against himself and his countrymen from
the pair; but he had triumphed, and rejoiced greatly when he went home
with Johnson, and heard the great man speak of his pleasant dinner to
Mrs. Williams. Johnson seems to have been permanently reconciled to his
foe. "Did we not hear so much said of Jack Wilkes," he remarked next
year, "we should think more highly of his conversation. Jack has a great
variety of talk, Jack is a scholar, and Jack has the manners of a
gentleman. But, after hearing his name sounded from pole to pole as the
phoenix of convivial felicity, we are disappointed in his company. He
has always been at _me_, but I would do Jack a kindness rather than not.
The contest is now over."

In fact, Wilkes had ceased to play any part in public life. When Johnson
met him next (in 1781) they joked about such dangerous topics as some of
Wilkes's political performances. Johnson sent him a copy of the _Lives_,
and they were seen conversing _tete-a-tete_ in confidential whispers
about George II. and the King of Prussia. To Boswell's mind it suggested
the happy days when the lion should lie down with the kid, or, as Dr.
Barnard suggested, the goat.

In the year 1777 Johnson began the _Lives of the Poets_, in compliance
with a request from the booksellers, who wished for prefaces to a large
collection of English poetry. Johnson asked for this work the extremely
modest sum of 200 guineas, when he might easily, according to Malone,
have received 1000 or 1500. He did not meet Boswell till September, when
they spent ten days together at Dr. Taylor's. The subject which
specially interested Boswell at this time was the fate of the unlucky
Dr. Dodd, hanged for forgery in the previous June. Dodd seems to have
been a worthless charlatan of the popular preacher variety. His crime
would not in our days have been thought worthy of so severe a
punishment; but his contemporaries were less shocked by the fact of
death being inflicted for such a fault, than by the fact of its being
inflicted on a clergyman. Johnson exerted himself to procure a remission
of the sentence by writing various letters and petitions on Dodd's
behalf. He seems to have been deeply moved by the man's appeal, and
could "not bear the thought" that any negligence of his should lead to
the death of a fellow-creature; but he said that if he had himself been
in authority he would have sign