The optick glasse of humors or The touchstone of a golden temperature, or the Philosophers stone to make a golden temper : wherein the foure complections sanguine, cholericke, phligmaticke, melancholicke are succinctly painted forth and their externall intimates laid open to the purblind eye of ignorance it selfe, by which euery one may iudge, of what complection he is, and answerably learne what is most sutable to his nature
The Optick Glasse of Humors is a 1639 London treatise by Thomas Walkington, printed by John Dawson and sold by Lawrence Blaiklock, that explains the four temperaments of sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic and melancholic personality to general readers. Its pictures are woodcut and engraved frontispieces and initials: a city-view panel of Oxford and Cambridge over a astrological wheel of planets and humours, a title page with two gowned scholars holding a spear, and an ornate foliate capital A. A designer could draw on the dense, crowded ornament and the old-fashioned emblematic layouts for period typography and decorative framing.
