by all; when you take your leave
you are dismissed with kisses; you return, kisses are repeated. They come
to visit you, kisses again; they leave you, you kiss them all round.
Should they meet you anywhere, kisses in abundance in fine, wherever you
move there is nothing but kisses"--a custom, says this reformer, who has
not the fear of Stubbes before his eyes, "never to be sufficiently
commended."

We shall find no more convenient opportunity to end this part of the
social study of the age of Shakespeare than with this naive picture of
the sex which most adorned it. Some of the details appear trivial; but
grave history which concerns itself only with the actions of conspicuous
persons, with the manoeuvres of armies, the schemes of politics, the
battles of theologies, fails signally to give us the real life of the
people by which we judge the character of an age.

III

When we turn from France to England in, the latter part of the sixteenth
and the beginning of the seventeenth century, we are in another
atmosphere; we encounter a literature that smacks of the soil, that is as
varied, as racy, often as rude, as human life itself, and which cannot be
adequately appreciated except by a study of the popular mind and the
history of the time which produced it.

"Voltaire," says M. Guizot, "was the first person in France who spoke of
Shakespeare's genius; and although he spoke of him merely as a barbarian
genius, the French public were of the opinion that he had said too much
in his favor. Indeed, they thought it nothing less than profanation to
apply the words genius and glory to dramas which they considered as crude
as they were coarse."

Guizot was one of the first of his nation to approach Shakespeare in the
right spirit--that is, in the spirit in which he could hope for any
enlightenment; and in his admirable essay on "Shakespeare and His Times,"
he pointed out the exact way in which any piece or period of literature
should be studied, that is worth studying at all. He inquired into
English civilization, into the habits, manners, and modes of thought of
the people for whom Shakespeare wrote. This method, this inquiry into
popular sources, has been carried much further since Guizot wrote, and it
is now considered the most remunerative method, whether the object of
study is literature or politics. By it not only is the literature of a
period for the first time understood, but it is given its just place as
an exp