For, after a laborious and attentive perusal of histories, memoirs, chronicles, lives, characters, vindications, panegyricks and epitaphs, I could find no sufficient authority for ascribing to any of our English monarchs, however gracious or glorious, any prophetical knowledge or prescience of futurity; which, when we consider how rarely regal virtues are forgotten, how soon they are discovered, and how loudly they are celebrated, affords a probable argument, at least, that none of them have laid any claim to this character.  For why should historians have omitted to embellish their accounts with such a striking circumstance? or, if the histories of that age are lost, by length of time, why was not so uncommon an excellence transmitted to posterity, in the more lasting colours of poetry?  Was that unhappy age without a laureate?  Was there then no Young [19] or Philips [20], no Ward [21] or Mitchell [22], to snatch such wonders from oblivion, and immortalize a prince of such capacities?  If this was really the case, let us congratulate ourselves upon being reserved for better days; days so fruitful of happy writers, that no princely virtue can shine in vain.  Our monarchs are surrounded with refined spirits, so penetrating, that they frequently discover, in their masters, great qualities, invisible to vulgar eyes, and which, did not they publish them to mankind, would be unobserved for ever.

Nor is it easy to find, in the lives of our monarchs, many instances of that regard for posterity, which seems to have been the prevailing temper of this venerable man.  I have seldom, in any of the gracious speeches delivered from the throne, and received, with the highest gratitude and satisfaction, by both houses of parliament, discovered any other concern than for the current year, for which supplies are generally demanded in very pressing terms, and, sometimes, such as imply no remarkable solicitude for posterity.

Nothing, indeed, can be more unreasonable and absurd, than to require, that a monarch, distracted with cares and surrounded with enemies, should involve himself in superfluous anxieties, by an unnecessary concern about future generations.  Are not pretenders, mock-patriots, masquerades, operas, birthnights, treaties, conventions, reviews, drawing-rooms, the births of heirs, and the deaths of queens, sufficient to overwhelm any capacity but that of a king?  Surely, he that acquits himself successfully of such affairs may content himself with the glory he acquires, and leave posterity to his successours.

That this has been the conduct of most princes, is evident from the accounts of all ages and nations; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought that I have, without just reasons, deprived this inscription of the veneration it might demand, as the work of a king.

With what laborious struggles against prejudice and inclination, with what efforts of reasoning, and pertinacity of self-denial, I have prevailed upon myself to sacrifice the honour of this monument to the love of truth, none, who are unacquainted with the fondness of a commentator, will be able to conceive.  But this instance will be, I hope, sufficient to convince the publick, that I write with sincerity, and that, whatever my success may be, my intentions are good.