'Ah me! when shall I marry me?
Lovers are plenty; but fail to relieve me.
He, fond youth, that could carry me,
Offers to love, but means to deceive me.
But I will rally and combat the ruiner:
Not a look, nor a smile shall my passion discover;
She that gives all to the false one pursuing her,
Makes but a penitent and loses a lover.'
Boswell, in a letter published in Goldsmith's Misc. Works, ii. 116, with the song, says:—'The tune is a pretty Irish air, call The Humours of Ballamagairy, to which, he told me, he found it very difficult to adapt words; but he has succeeded very happily in these few lines. As I could sing the tune and was fond of them, he was so good as to give me them. I preserve this little relic in his own handwriting with an affectionate care.'
[641] See ante, i. 408, and post April 7, 1776.
[642] See ante, ii. 74.
[643] See ante, i. 429.
[644] See ante, ii. 169, for Johnson's 'half-a-guinea's worth of inferiority.'
[645] Boswell (ante, i. 256) mentions that he knew Lyttelton. For his History, see ante, ii. 37.
[646] Johnson has an interesting paper 'on lying' in The Adventurer, No. 50, which thus begins:—'When Aristotle was once asked what a man could gain by uttering falsehoods, he replied, "Not to be credited when he shall tell the truth."'
[647] Johnson speaks of the past, for Sterne had been dead five years. Gray wrote on April 22, 1760:—'Tristram Shandy is still a greater object of admiration, the man as well as the book. One is invited to dinner where he dines a fortnight beforehand.' Gray's Works, ed. 1858, iii. 241.
[648] 'I was but once,' said Johnson, 'in Sterne's company, and then his only attempt at merriment consisted in his display of a drawing too indecently gross to have delighted even in a brothel.' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 214.