The expostulation was not out of place, for by some means or other, (what I know not) our heroine was defrauded of her right to tell the other half; and whether it was ever told, or not, I hope is no great object to the reader; for, upon the word and honour of a novelist, I have no authority, that can decide the question. In due time the corpse of Philip De Lancaster arrived and was interred in the vault with his ancestors. Every member of that antient house attended the funeral, and several of the intimates and friends of the family shewed their respect by being present at the solemnity. As the parishioners and labouring poor had no particular reason for tears and lamentations, they reasonably enough forbore to interrupt the ceremony, and only gratified their curiosity by gazing on the plumes and scutcheons and the costly pall and coffin: this did extremely well, and the cheering horn of fat Welch ale, that was dealt out to quench a thirst, that was natural to them at all times, and did not spring upon this occasion from sorrow, did still better. A great company were regaled in the state apartment’s of the castle, and a mighty mob in the lower regions. Whilst these things were going on, Lawyer Davis, Doctor Llewellyn and the family-bard old Williams held a special consistory in a private cell, for the purpose of minuting down the _memoranda_, proper to be inserted in the family archives under the article of “Philip De Lancaster Esquire, lineally descended in the male line without a flaw from Japhet, son of Noah.” The bard was to dictate; the Lawyer was to write, and the Doctor was to smoke his pipe, and make comments. As it was a business not to be dismissed in a slight perfunctory manner, there was a huge can of metheglin on the table to assist thought, for the _data_, that blind David had to go upon, were rather of the scantiest; and when a biographer has little or nothing before him, he must depend upon his wits for matter. David opened the consultation by observing, that, before they sate down to their work, it was correctly in rule to make a libation to the immortal memory of the excellent person, whose virtues they were about to record; and he assured himself, that posterity would peruse the life and actions of Mr. Philip De Lancaster with peculiar interest and avidity. After they had drank they began to deliberate, and the Doctor suggested, that the first thing needful was to prove the life, before they narrated the actions, of Mr. De Lancaster. That is already settled, said the Lawyer, by entering, as I have done, the date of his birth. Pardon me, replied the Doctor, that entry is not quite authority, unless you can show that he was _born to die_; for in many cases, which I have met, the death of the object in question has been known to forerun the birth.