A compleat and excellent Poet

John Dryden

So Wine use’d moderately does not take away the Judgement, but used continually debauches mens understandings; and turns ’em into Sots, making their heads continually hot by accident, as the others heads are by nature; so mere Poets and mere Musicians, are as sottish as mere Drunkards are, who live in a continuall mist, without seeing, or judgeing any thing clearly.

A man should be learn’d in severall Sciences, and should have a reasonable Philosophicall, and in some measure a Mathematicall head, to be a compleat and excellent Poet. And besides this should have experience in all sorts of humours and manners of men; should be thoroughly skil’d in conversation, and should have a great Knowledge of mankind in generall.

Fonte (em port.): Sagan, C. 1985 [1977]. Os dragões do Éden. RJ, F Alves. Trecho extraído de livro publicado em 1674.