How to Choose Tinted Glasses, 1653

Cornelius Meyer, Nuovi ritrovamenti (1689)

"Of Spectacles of pleasure. Simple Spectacles of blew, yellow, red or green colour, are proper to recreate the sight, and will present the objects died in like colour that the Glasses are, only those of the greene do somewhat degenerate; instead of shewing a lively colour it will represent a pale dead colour, and it is because they are not dyed greene enough, or receive not light enough for greene... all colours are not proper to Glasses to give colour..." 

William Oughtred, Mathematicall Recreations

Your choice: the spectacles of pleasure, or the shades of pallid death.

How to Make a Rainbow, 1633

Peter Paul Rubens, Landscape With a Rainbow (c. 1638)

"The Rainebow is a thing admirable in the world, which ravisheth often the eyes and spirits of men in consideration of his rich intermingled colours which are seene under the cloudes, seeming as the glistering of the starres, pretious stones, & ornaments of the most beautious flowers... I will shew you how you may doe it at your doore, by a fine and facill experiment. Take water in your mouth, and turne your backe to the Sunne, and your face against some obscure place, then blow out the water which is in your mouth, that it may bee sprinkled in small drops and vapours: you shall see these atomes vapours in the beames of the Sunne to turne into a faire Rainebow, but all the griefe is that it lasteth not but soone is vanished." 

Hendrik van Etten, Mathematicall Recreations (1633)

Did you know that you have a beauteous rainbow inside of you? And that you can ravish mens' spirits with its rich intermingled colors? Just make sure that they are not standing directly in the path of your mouth-rainbow.