Page:The Brittish Princes, an Heroick Poem - Howard (1669, 1st ed).djvu/16

 sion of our most antient Records (as if it had been the sole ambition of their Power and Success, to make Posterity believe they had a being from their Conqueror, have ecclipsed, with those Presidents of Fame, the High Renown of Royal Arthur; whose Deeds Authors are forced to deliver but as their best Fables. For the Character of Vortiger, our Stories of this Age (though very obscure and imperfect) mention him a Prince of this Nation; and possibly I have taken his Figure, more resembling what he truely was, or ought to be supposed, than had I endeavoured to produce his Life (as it stands imperfectly framed in Story) which considering the difference of Writers in the occurrences of that Age, must render much of the Truth they pretend to deliver, little better than mistake or fiction.

As to the Queen, whom I mention by the name of Bonduca, the strictness of some may be apt to call me to an Account; because there was a Brittish Queen called Voadicia, Boadicia, or Bonduca, in the time of Nero, mentioned by Historians, which is granted to precede the Age I take for my Poem, for whose satisfaction, I desire they will be contented to believe (as my Muse presumes to verifie) that this was another Person, though as Heroick and Glorious a Queen as the former: It being not at all impossible (since as I have already expressed) there were so few of the Princes of those times faithfully delivered to us from Hi-