Thomas Walkington. The Optick Glasse Of Humors. The Touchstone of a Golden Temperature: Or the Philosophers Stone to mak...
Description
Walkington's Study on the Four Temperamental Types
Thomas Walkington. The Optick Glasse Of Humors. The Touchstone of a Golden Temperature: Or the Philosophers Stone to make a golden Temper. Wherein the foure Complexions, Sangume, Cholericke, Phligmaticke, Melancholicke, are succinctly painted forth, and their externall Intimates laid open to the purblind eye of ignorance it self, by which every one may judge of what Complexion he is, and answerably learne what is most sutable to his Nature. London: for G Dawson, 1664. Twelvemo. ¹1.¦8, A-L8. [26], 168 pages. Engraved extra title-page with figures for Oxford & Cambridge; plate of temperaments beneath views of Oxford & Cambridge (outer margin cropped--minor loss). Modern antique tan calf, verso of last leaf darkened, margins trimmed close [just into some side-notes], scattered marginal damp stains, outer corners of frontispiece off, old signatures on the title page. "W. Vaughan" and "Wm. Nicoll:" From the Krown & Spellman Collection.Please visit HA.com/6112 for an extended description of this lot.
More Information:
Thomas Walkington (Circa.1575-1621), Church of England clergyman and author. "On 26 March 1602 he was elected fellow of the college, and in 1607 he published the work for which he is primarily remembered, The Optick Glasse of Humors, or, The Touchstone of a Golden Temperature. Dedicated to Sir Justinian Lewin from Walkington's college study on 10 March, this engaging account of Galen's four temperamental types went beyond the usual expository tradition of such treatises, and has been regarded as something of a curiosity. Lively, witty, and concerned at least as much to entertain as instruct, it foreshadowed the literary culmination of the tradition in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy...After his death The Optick Glasse went into several further editions. An undated edition, which cannot be dated earlier than 1627, was printed by William Turner at Oxford. This issue retains the 1607 dedication but substitutes a title-page elaborately engraved on steel, showing an optic glass held aloft by two graduates in cap and gown, who represent respectively the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The universities are further depicted in a facing engraving, above a diagram of the humours abstracted from page 39 of the 1607 text. An identical London edition appeared in 1639; and in 1664 an edition appeared with both a printed title-page (dated 1664) and the later engraved version (dated 1663). " [Oxford DNB]. Wing W459. ESTC r38058. Krivatsy/NLM 12582.
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