Thackeray's Verses on Dr. McCosh

1895

Most persons seem to have forgotten Thackeray's allusion in verse to Dr. McCosh. When the discussion over the doctor's appointment to the lordship of Queen's college, Belfast, was at its height, Thackeray wrote in his characteristic Irish brogue a poem purporting to be by the hand of Master Molloy Mollony, aged 15. The opening stanza runs thus:

As I think of the insult that's done to this nation
Hot tears of revinge from me fatures I wash,
And uphold in this pome to the world's daytistation
The sleeves that appointed Professor McCosh.

— New York Sun.