De sa bouche ist si douce haleine, Vivre en peut-on une semaine; Qui au lundi le sentiroit En la semaine mal n’avroit. Moreover, as the flavour of a kiss depends on the woman’s mouth, let us, therefore, investigate how a woman’s mouth ought to be fashioned in order to fulfil its purpose from a philematological point of view. When the mediæval French poets describe a beautiful and desirable woman they say of her mouth that it must be “well-formed and sweet to kiss” (_bien faite et douce pour baiser_). The troubadours likewise in their love poems praise the mouth that is _ben faita ad obs de baisar_. If more detailed explanations are wanted they can easily be given. The lips must, in the first place, be bewitchingly soft; next, they must be as red as coral: Los labios de la su boca Como un fino coral, or else red as roses: La bocca piccioletta e colorita, Vermiglia come rosa di giardino, Piagente ed amorosa per baciare.[3] This last simile is one of the most frequently employed. The beloved one’s mouth is likened to a rose; it has the scent and colour of a rose: Hæc dulcis in amore Est et plena decore, Rosa rubet rubore, Et lilium convallium Tota vincit odore, sang the wandering clerks in the Middle Ages, the jolly Goliards, and they extolled the youth who was lucky enough to kiss the mouth of such a woman: Felix est qui osculis mellifluis Ipsius potitur. And, they went on to say, “on every maiden’s lips the kiss sits like a rose which only longs to be plucked”: Sedit in ore Rosa cum pudore. The old German minnesingers use the expression _Küssblümlein_ (kiss-floweret), and a bard of the Netherlands sings: “My beloved is my summer, my beloved is my joy, all the roses bloom every time she gives me a kiss”: Mijn liefken is mijn somer, Min liefken is mijn lust, En al de rosen bloejen So dicmael si mi cust. But all this is only poetry, merely feeble imageries which only give an entirely weak idea of the reality. How accurate is Thomas Moore when, in one of his poems, he declares that roses are not so warm as his beloved’s mouth, nor can the dew approach it in sweetness. Now if we turn to the other aspect of the case and see what women expect from a man’s kiss, then the question becomes somewhat more difficult to treat, inasmuch as so exceedingly few women have treated of kisses in poetry--a fact which is also in itself quite natural. Runeberg, who himself has so often sung the praises of kissing without, however, being versed in their nature: For my part I’ve ne’er understood Of kisses what can be the good; But I should die if kept away From thy red lips one single day. W. F. H. asks his beloved: Now, dearest maiden, answer me, What joy can kisses bring to thee? W. F. H. But she fails to answer him: