“Tears, too, are of utility: by tears you will move adamant. Make her, if you can, to see your moistened cheeks. If tears shall fail you, for indeed they do not always come in time, touch your eyes with your wet hand. What discreet person will not mingle kisses with tender words? Though she should not grant them, still take them ungranted. Perhaps she will struggle at first, and will say, ‘You naughty man!’ Still, in her struggling she will wish to be overcome. Only, let them not, rudely snatched, hurt her tender lips, and take care that she may not be able to complain that they have proved a cause of pain. He who has gained kisses, if he cannot gain the rest as well, will deserve to lose even that which has been granted him. How much is there wanting for unlimited enjoyment after a kiss! Oh, shocking! ’twere clownishness, not modesty. Call it violence, if you like; such violence is pleasing to the fair; they often wish, through compulsion, to grant what they are delighted to grant.” * * * * * Turning from Ovid to the Greek Anthology, we find this epigram: “The kiss that she left on my lip Like a dew-drop shall lingering lie: ’Twas nectar she gave me to sip, ’Twas nectar I drank in her sigh! “The dew that distilled in that kiss To my soul was voluptuous wine: Ever since it is drunk with the bliss, And feels a delirium divine.” * * * * * Anacreon, in one of his odes, speaks of the heart flying to the lips; and Plato, in a distich quoted by Aulus Gellius, tells us of the effect of a kiss upon his susceptibility: “Whene’er thy nectared kiss I sip, And drink thy breath in melting twine, My soul then flutters to my lip, Ready to fly and mix with thine.” Plato also wrote: “My soul, when I kissed Agathon, did start Up to my lips, just ready to depart.” “Oh! on that kiss my soul, As if in doubt to stay, Lingered awhile, on fluttering wing prepared To fly away.” * * * * * Anacreon uses this figurative expression: “They tainted all his bowl of blisses, His bland desires and hallowed kisses.” By the ancient expression “cups of kisses,” reference is most probably made to a favorite gallantry among the Greeks and Romans of drinking when the lips of their mistresses had touched the brim. Ben Jonson’s oft-quoted verses to Celia, in which occur the lines— “Or leave a kiss within the cup, And I’ll not ask for wine,”— are translated from Philostratus, a Greek poet of the second century. Lucian has a conceit upon the same idea: “that you may at once both drink and kiss.” And Meleager says: “Blest is the goblet, oh! how blest, Which Heliodora’s lips have pressed! Oh! might thy lips but meet with mine, My soul should melt away in thine.” Agathias also says: