s 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 s