Margarida gave her lover a kiss, which fact coming to the knowledge of her husband, he gave her the troubadour’s heart to eat, disguised as a savory morsel. When Queen Margaret kissed Chartier, the ugliest man in France, she exclaimed: “I kiss the soul that sings.” Voltaire was kissed in the stage-box at the theatre by the lovely Countess de Villars. John Milton, when a collegian, was kissed by a high-born Italian beauty; and Sterne, the novelist, says of kisses: “For my own part, I would rather kiss the lips I love than dance with all the graces of Greece, after bathing themselves in the springs of Parnassus. Flesh and blood for me, with an angel in the inside.”
Tom Hood once questioned whether the grave, sedate Hannah More had ever been kissed; and Horace Smith, in his “Rejected Addresses,” affirms that on a certain occasion:
Sidney Morgan was playing the organ,
While behind the vestry door
Horace Twiss was snatching a kiss
From the lips of Hannah More.
Every one remembers the famous kiss imprinted by Mr. Bumble on the “chaste nose” of Mrs. Corney; and the still more famous kiss applied to the lips of Mary, the pretty housemaid, by Sam Weller. Sam had dropped his hat, which the housemaid picked up, and Sam kissed her.
“You don’t mean to say you did that on purpose?” said the pretty housemaid, blushing.
“No, I didn’t then,” said Sam, “but I vill now.” So he kissed her again.
“Sam!” said Mr. Pickwick, calling over the banisters.