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. Among the allusions of this nature in his "Sonnets," the selection of a few will answer our purpose. The first occurs in the twenty-second sonnet:— "My glass shall not persuade _me I am old_, So long as youth and thou are of one date." The two next are still more explicit:— "But when my glass shows me myself indeed, _'Bated and chopp'd with tan'd antiquity_:" Son. 62. "Against my love shall be, _as I am now, With time's injurious hand crush'd and o'erworn_:" Son. 63. and the last that we shall give completes the picture, which, though overcharged in its colouring, must be allowed, we think, to reflect some lineaments of the truth:— "That time of year thou may'st in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou seest the twilight of such day, As after sun-set fadeth in the west—— In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie." Son. 73. The comparison instituted in these lines between the _bare ruined choir_ of a cathedral, and an avenue at the close of autumn, has given origin to a short but very elegantly written note from the pen of Mr. Steevens. "This image," he remarks, "was probably suggested to Shakspeare by our desolated monasteries. The resemblance between the vaulting of a Gothic isle, and an avenue of trees whose upper branches meet and form an arch over-head, is too striking not to be acknowledged. When the roof of the one is shattered, and the boughs of the other leafless, the comparison becomes yet more solemn and picturesque."[52:A]