Sweet petitioner for kisses.”
Tatius speaks of “lips soft and delicate for kissing;” and that grave old commentator, Lambinus, in his notes upon Lucretius, tells us, with all the authority of experience, that girls who have large lips kiss infinitely sweeter than others!
Æneas Sylvius, in his story of the loves of Euryalus and Lucretia, where he particularizes the beauties of the heroine, describes her lips as exquisitely adapted for biting.[3] And Catullus, in his poems (viii.), asks, “Whom will you love now? Whose will you be called? Whom will you kiss? Whose lips will you bite? But you, Catullus, be stubbornly obdurate.” As Lamb has it:
“Whose fondling care shalt thou avow?
Whose kisses now shalt thou return?
Whose lip in rapture bite? But thou,
Hold, hold, Catullus, cold and stern.”
Or, as Elton renders it:
“Whom wilt thou for thy lover choose?