And it is almost impossible to select half a dozen stanzas of classic verse from Tennyson or Rossetti or Browning or Shelley or Byron, which do not contain anything about kissing, embracing, or longing for some imaginary or real beloved.

Wordsworth, indeed, is something of an exception; and Coleridge is most famous for a poem which contains nothing at all about love.

But exceptions do not affect the general rule that love is the theme of English poetry, as it is also of French, Italian, Spanish, or German poetry.

It is the dominant motive.
So with the English novelists.

There have been here also a few exceptions--such as the late Robert Louis Stevenson, most of whose novels contain little about women; they are chiefly novels or romances of adventure.