To march in ranks of better equipage."
A small portion of the fame and property which he afterwards
enjoyed, could have fallen to his share when he composed the thirty-seventh sonnet, the purport of which is to declare, that though
—— "made lame by fortune's dearest spite,"
he is rich in the perfections of his mistress, and having engrafted his love to her abundant store, he adds,
"So then I am not lame, poor, nor despis'd."
There is much reason to conclude, however, that by far the greater part of these sonnets was written after the bard had passed the meridian of his life, and during the ten years which preceded their publication; consequently, that with the exception of a few of earlier date, they were the amusement of his leisure from his thirty-fifth to his forty-fifth year. We have been led to this result from the numerous allusions which the author has made, in these poems, to the effects of time on his person; and though these may be, and are without doubt, exaggerated, yet are they fully adequate to prove that the writer could no longer be accounted young. It is remarkable that the hundred and thirty-eighth sonnet, which was originally printed in the Passionate Pilgrim contains a notice of this kind:
"Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best;"
an expression which well accords with the poet's then period of life; for when Jaggard surreptitiously published the minor collection, Shakspeare was thirty-five years old.