This Æglogue is rather moral and general than bent to any secret or
particular purpose. It specially containeth a discourse of old age, in
the person of Thenot, an old shepheard, who, for his crookedness and
unlustiness, is scorned of Cuddie, an unhappy herdman's boy. The matter
very well accordeth with the season of the moneth, the year now
drooping, and as it were drawing to his last age. For as in this time of
year, so then in our bodies, there is a dry and withering cold, which
congealeth the curdled blood, and freezeth the weather-beaten flesh,
with storms of Fortune and hoar-frosts of Care. To which purpose the old
man telleth a tale of the Oak and the Brier, so lively, and so
feelingly, as, if the thing were set forth in some picture before our
eyes, more plainly could not appear.