Romantic Circles

Significance

Although it was published in the first half of the eighteenth century, Robert Smith’s A Compleat System of Opticks remained an important and highly regarded textbook on the subject well into the nineteenth century, thus influencing Romantic notions of optical science and the formation of vision (J. Barrow-Green, “A Corrective to the Spirit” 275). Unlike the rational recreations texts produced later in the century, Smith describes all the instruments on the illustrated plate with a full consideration of the complex optical physics and dense mathematical reasoning behind the creation of an image through an optical device. Considered the foremost book on optics of the eighteenth century, the text and illustrated plates navigate between the strictly scientific and the more fantastic uses of optical and image-making technologies. “Plate 57” in particular juxtaposes geometrical drawings of glass lens types with illustrations of magic lanterns, devices used for the creation of “some ludicrous or frightful representation, the more to divert the spectators” (Smith, A Compleat System 389). Here, Smith aligns the camera obscura (Figure 635), specifically noting its use in drawing, with two different versions of the magic lantern. Although the camera obscura was not usually used for the creation of “ludicrous or frightful” images, this arrangement highlights similar representational capabilities of the camera obscura, thus expanding the range of optical instruments that influenced Romantic vision to include the magic lantern. Throughout the text, Smith repeatedly mentions Mr. Scarlett, an instrument maker who had a shop near St. Anne’s, London, where he performed glass grinding, lens making, and the construction of optical instruments (R. Smith, A Compleat System 384). Specifically, Smith reveals that Mr. Scarlett made the portable camera obscura for drawing featured in the illustration (Figure 635 on “Plate 57”). The emphasis on Mr. Scarlett and his shop suggests the reliance of natural philosophers and mathematicians of optics on contemporary lens-making technologies; all of the optical equipment illustrated on “Plate 57” utilized man-made glass lenses or reflective mirrors. Although “geometrical optics was relatively advanced,” as demonstrated by Smith’s mathematical explications, “the practice of making achromatic lenses was not [and] glassmakers who could manufacture optical disks larger than four inches in diameter were highly sought after” and relatively rare (M. Jackson, “Optics”). The commercial concentration of most instrument makers in the eighteenth century was surveying instruments, telescopes, and eyeglasses rather than the more specialized camera obscura, which, although often mentioned in advertisements for the instrument makers’ shops, were not as commonly produced (J. Hammond, The Camera Obscura 77-78). Thus, Smith’s early text theoretically and mathematically describes a range of optical instruments, some of which the general public would not have had easy access to until later in the eighteenth century, when the devices had a greater general impact on Romantic notions of vision and visuality.