Note 46 — THEN AND NOW.
Reading edition
It does not seem that the Lisbon Packet forty-eight years later was much superior to the vessel described by Fielding, to judge from Byron’s verses written in 1809.
“Hey day! call you that a cabin?
Why ’tis hardly three feet square!
Not enough to stow Queen Mab in:
Who the deuce can harbour there?
‘Who, sir? plenty—
Nobles twenty
Did at once my vessel fill’—
Did they? Jesus,
How you squeeze us!
Would to God they did so still!
Then I’d ’scape the heat and racket
Of the good ship Lisbon Packet.”