Hafiz’ mistress is afraid that “his too hot kisses will char her delicate lips.” With continually increasing desire kisses grow more and more voluptuous, and assume forms which have been celebrated by poets of antiquity and the Renaissance. Many burning, erotic verses have been composed on the subject _columbatim labra conserere_, or kissing as doves kiss. Kisses at last grow into bites. Mirabeau, in a love-letter to Sophie, writes: “I am kissing you and biting you all over, _et jaloux de la blancheur je te couvre de suçons_”; and the classic poets often speak of the tiny red marks on cheeks or lips, neck or shoulders, which the lovers’ _morsiunculæ_ have left behind. Arethusa writes to Lycas: “What keeps you till now so long away from me? Oh, suffer no young girl to print the mark of her teeth on your neck.” The Italians use the expression _baciare co’ denti_ (kiss with the teeth) to signify “to love.” We can only treat these kisses as a sort of transitional link, of shorter or longer duration, according to circumstances. They are, as it were, “a sea fraught with perils,” which in Mlle. de Scudéry’s celebrated letter (_la carte de tendre_), carries one to strange countries (_les terres inconnues_); but, as these countries lie outside the regions of pure philematology, I shall not pursue my investigations further. I will, however, first quote what old Ovid has written, although I am not at all prepared to assert that his opinion is entitled to have any special weight, more especially as it is far from being unimpeachable from a moral point of view: Oscula qui sumpsit, si non et cetera sumet, Hæc quoque quæ data sunt perdere dignus erit. Quantum defuerat pleno post oscula voto? Heu mihi rusticitas, non pudor ille fuit.[8] After the foregoing it would seem superfluous to enter into a closer investigation of--if the term be allowed--the topographical aspects of kissing. The love kiss is, as you are aware, properly directed towards the mouth--a fact sufficiently known, and in testimony of which I have, moreover, brought forward a number of passages from respectable and trustworthy writers. I shall only add a German “Sinngedicht” of Friedrich von Logau: If you will kiss, then kiss the mouth, All other sorts are but half blisses, The face--ah, no--nor hand, neck, breast, The mouth alone can give back kisses. W. F. H.