3 seq. 'Unnatural History' was getting past its greatest vogue, and only eight years later Pseudodoxia Epidemica was to deal it blows all the more deadly because not unsympathetic. But it was still popular, and a grand set-off to many poetic 'Rascians'. Whiting is here pilfering from Greene's Pandosto; a passage in the dedication runs, 'The Rascians (right honourable) when by long gazing against the sun, they become half-blind, recover their sights by looking at the black load-stone. Unicorns, being glutted, by browsing on roots of liquorice, sharpen their stomachs with crashing bitter grass'.
4 'swarfy' = swarthy.
7 That 'bitter' would be grateful to others besides unicorns after a surfeit of liquorice may be easily admitted. 'Crash' for 'crush' or 'crunch' in this sense is good.
11 The book is badly printed—in hardly any of my texts have I had to alter more trivial misspellings. Here intelligent 'setting' would of course have made 'But' a separate line or fragment of line.
23 age it] = 'throw it back in date'.
42 Not bad for 'You gave the subject' &c.
The Author's Apology.
Some rigid stoic will (I doubt not) shoot
A quipping censure at this wanton fruit,