The noble Chair[7] stud at the stair And bade the dhrums to thump; and he Did thus evince to that Black Prince The welcome of his Company.[8] O fair the girls and rich the curls, And bright the oys you saw there was; And fixed each oye you then could spoi On General Jung Bahawther was! This gineral great then tuck his sate, With all the other ginerals, Bedad his troat, his belt, his coat, All bleezed with precious minerals; And as he there, with princely air, Recloinin on his cushion was, All round about his royal chair The squeezin and the pushin was. O Pat, such girls, such jukes and earls, Such fashion and nobilitee! Just think of Tim, and fancy him Amidst the high gentilitee! There was the Lord de L'Huys, and the Portygeese Ministher and his lady there, And I recognised, with much surprise, Our messmate, Bob O'Grady, there. All these are very good fun,--so good in humour and so good in expression, that it would be needless to criticise their peculiar dialect, were it not that Thackeray has made for himself a reputation by his writing of Irish. In this he has been so entirely successful that for many English readers he has established a new language which may not improperly be called Hybernico-Thackerayan. If comedy is to be got from peculiarities of dialect, as no doubt it is, one form will do as well as another, so long as those who read it know no better. So it has been with Thackeray's Irish, for in truth he was not familiar with the modes of pronunciation which make up Irish brogue. Therefore, though he is always droll, he is not true to nature. Many an Irishman coming to London, not unnaturally tries to imitate the talk of Londoners. You or I, reader, were we from the West, and were the dear County Galway to send either of us to Parliament, would probably endeavour to drop the dear brogue of our country, and in doing so we should make some mistakes. It was these mistakes which Thackeray took for the natural Irish tone. He was amused to hear a major called "Meejor," but was unaware that the sound arose from Pat's affection of English softness of speech. The expression natural to the unadulterated Irishman would rather be "Ma-ajor." He discovers his own provincialism, and trying to be polite and urbane, he says "Meejor." In one of the lines I have quoted there occurs the word "troat." Such a sound never came naturally from the mouth of an Irishman. He puts in an h instead of omitting it, and says "dhrink." He comes to London, and finding out that he is wrong with his "dhrink," he leaves out all the h's he can, and thus comes to "troat." It is this which Thackeray has heard. There is a little piece called the _Last Irish Grievance_, to which Thackeray adds a still later grievance, by the false sounds which he elicits from the calumniated mouth of the pretended Irish poet.