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.
Here is the date of his death, rejoined the Lawyer, copied from the plate on his coffin; and by this it appears, that he lived to complete a period of forty-three years, five months and three days.
Sufficit! said Llewellyn; the plate upon his coffin is evidence. Now let us understand what he employed himself upon during that period.
A silence ensued for a considerable time. David referred himself to the metheglin; the other two to meditation on the past events of Philip’s life, as materials for history.
He was very fond of angling, said the Lawyer.—He was so, replied the Doctor, and you may put that down in the archives, only you need not inform posterity, that he never got a bite.
Pooh! rejoined Davis, that naturally happened, because he was too indolent to bait his hook.—He had an acknowledged partiality for the game of chess.