The ‘burning’ kiss might be thought passionate and even durable enough for any extremity—yet Shakspere prefers, perhaps from an unconscious association of ideas, the durability of which Printing is the emblem when he makes the Goddess of Love exclaim:
Pure lips, sweet seals on my soft lips imprinted.
Venus and Adonis, l. 511.
The same idea of durability is expressed in the cry of Henry’s guilty Queen, when parting with Suffolk:
Oh, could this kiss be printed on thy hand!
2 Henry VI, iii, 2.
The idea has been still further developed in the following anonymous quatrain:
A PRINTER’S KISSES.
Print on my lips another kiss,
The picture of my glowing passion.
Nay, this wont do—nor this, nor this;
But now—Ay, that’s a proof impression.
Many of Vautrollier’s publications went through several editions. In the ‘Merry Wives’, II, 1, Mistress Page says:
These are of the second edition,
and well can we imagine Shakspere handing volumes to a buyer with the same remark, or asking some patron with whom he was a favourite:
Com’st thou with deep premeditated lines,
With written pamphlet studiously devised?
1 Henry VI, iii, 1.