And such a reflection as that of Agesilaus, who said concerning
the king of Persia, when he heard him called the Great: And who is
greater than I, unless he be more just? So Epaminondas answered the
Lacedaemonians, when they had spun out a long accusation against the
Thebans: I see then we have forced you out of your wonted humor of
short speech.
The like to these are proper against adversaries; but amongst our
friends and fellow-citizens a seasonable glorying is good not only to
humble and throw down their haughtiness, but if they be fearful or
astonished, to fetch back their courage and teach them to rally up
themselves again. Therefore Cyrus in perils and battles talked at a
thundering rate, but otherwise was mild and gentle in discourse. And
Antigonus the Second generally was modest and free from blustering; but
at the sea-fight at Cos,—one of his friends saying, See you not how
much greater the number of the enemy’s ships is than ours?—he answers,
And for how many ships dost thou reckon me?
This Homer seems to have considered, who makes Ulysses, when his
friends were dismayed at the noise and horrible waves of Charybdis,
immind them of his former stratagems and valor:
O friends! O often tried in adverse storms!
With ills familiar in more dreadful forms!
Deep in the dire Cyclopean den you lay,
Yet safe return’d,—Ulysses led the way.[185]
For this kind of praise is not such as the haranguers to the people
or sophistical beggars use, nor those who affect popular humming and
applause; but a necessary pledge of that courage and conduct which
must be given to hearten up our friends. For we know that opinion
and confidence in him whom we esteem endued with the fortitude and
experience of a complete captain is, in the crisis of a battle, no
small advantage to the obtaining of the day.
17. We have before declared the opposing of himself to the reputation
and credit of another to be altogether unbefitting a worthy man; but
where a vicious praise becomes hurtful and corruptive, creating an
earnestness after evil things or an evil purpose in great matters,
it is not unprofitable to refuse it; but it becomes us to direct the
minds of the company towards better sentiments of things, showing them
the difference. For certainly any one will be pleased when he sees
many voluntarily abstaining from the vices they heard cried down and
reproved; but if baseness be well accounted of, and honor be made to
attend on him who pursues pleasure or avarice, where is the nature so
happily strong that can resist, much less conquer, the temptation?
Therefore a generous and discreet person must set himself against
the praises, not of evil men, but of evil actions; for this kind of
commendation perverts the judgments of men, and miserably leads them
to imitate and emulate unworthy practices as laudable. But they may
be easily bewrayed by confronting them with opposite truths. Theodorus
the tragedian is reported to have said to Satyrus the comedian, It is
not so wonderful an art to move the theatre’s laughter as to force its
tears. But if some philosopher should have retorted, Aye; but, friend,
it is not so fit and seemly to make men weep, as to remove and free
them from their sorrows, it is likely by this odd way of commending
himself he would have delighted his hearer, and endeavored to alter
or secure his judgment. So Zeno knew how to speak for himself, when
the great number of Theophrastus’s scholars was opposed to the fewness
of his, saying, His chorus is indeed greater than mine, but mine is
sweeter. And Phocion, while Leosthenes yet prospered, being asked by
the orators what good he had done the city, replies: Nothing but this,
that in my government of you there have been no funeral orations, but
all the deceased were buried in the sepulchres of their ancestors. So
Crates, by way of antithesis to this epitaph of the glutton,
What I have eat is mine; in words my will
I’ve had, and of my lust have took my fill,
well opposes these,
What I have learnt is mine; I’ve had my thought,
And me the Muses noble truths have taught.
This kind of praise is amiable and advantageous, teaching to admire and
love convenient and profitable things instead of the superfluous and
vain. Thus much for the stating of the question, in what cases and how
far self-praise may be inoffensive.
18. Now the order of the discourse requires to show how an uncomely and
unseasonable affectation of praise may be avoided. Discourse of a man’s
self usually sallies from self-love, as from its fort, and is there
observed to lay wait, even in those who are vulgarly thought free
enough from ambition. Therefore, as it is one of the rules of health to
avoid dangerous and unwholesome places, or being in them to take the
greater care, so ought there to be a like rule concerning converse and
speaking of one’s self. For this kind of talk has slippery occasions,
into which we unawares and indiscernibly are apt to fall.
For first (as is above said), ambition usually intrudes into the
praises of others with some flourishing remarks to adorn herself. For
let a person be commended by his equal or inferior, the mind of the
ambitious is tickled and rubbed at the hearing of his praise, and
immediately he is hurried by an intemperate desire and precipitation
after the like; as the appetite of the hungry is sharpened by seeing
others eat.
19. In the second place, the story of men’s prosperous actions
naturally carries them into the humor of boasting; and joy so far
transports them, that they swell with their own words when they would
give you a relation of their victories or their success in the business
of the state, or of their other publicly applauded actions or orations,
and find it difficult to contain themselves and preserve a mean. In
which kind of error it is observable that soldiers and mariners are
most entangled. Nor is it infrequent with those who return from the
government of provinces and the management of great affairs. Such as
these, when mention is once made of illustrious and royal personages,
presently thrust in some eulogies of themselves, as proceeding from
the favor and kind opinion of those princes: and then they fancy they
seem not at all to have praised themselves, but to have given only a
bare account what great men have said honorably of them. So another
sort, little different from these, think they are not discerned when
they tell you all the familiarities of kings and emperors with them and
their particular applying themselves to them in discourse, and appear
to recount them, not as thereby intending their own honor, but as
bringing in considerable evidences of singular affability and humanity
in persons so exceeding great.
We see then what reason we have to look narrowly to ourselves, that,
whilst we confer praises on others, we give no ground for suspicion
that we make them but the vehicles of our own, and that, “in pretending
to celebrate Patroclus,” under his name we mean romantically ourselves.
20. Further, that kind of discourse which consists in dispraising and
finding fault is dangerous, and yields opportunity to those that watch
it for the magnifying their own little worth. Of this old men are
inclinable to be guilty, when, by chastising and debasing others for
their vices, they exalt themselves as wonderfully great in the opposite
virtues. Indeed to these there must be a very large concession, if
they be reverend not only in age, but in virtue and place; for it is
not altogether an unprofitable way, since it may sometimes create an
extraordinary zeal and emulation of honor in those who are thus spurred
up. But otherwise that sort of humor is carefully to be shunned; for
reproof is often bitter, and wants a great deal of caution to sweeten
and correct it. Now this is not done by the tempering our own praises
with the reprehension of another; for he is an unworthy and odious
fellow who seeks his own credit through any man’s disgrace, basely
endeavoring to build a slight reputation of his virtue upon the
discovery of another’s crimes.
21. Lastly, as they who are naturally inclined to a dangerous sort of
laughter,—which is a kind of violent passion or disease,—must preserve
especially the smooth parts of the body from tickling incentives, which
cause these parts to yield and relent, thus provoking the passion; so
they whose minds are soft and propense to the desires of reputation
must carefully beware that they be not precipitated by the ticklings
of another’s praises into a vaporing of themselves. They ought rather
to blush, if they hear themselves commended, and not put on a brazen
face. They ought modestly and handsomely to reprove their applauders as
having honored them too much, and not chide them for having been too
sparing in their praise. Yet in this many offend, putting those who
speak advantageously of them in mind of more things of the same nature;
endeavoring to make a huge heap of creditable actions, till by what
they themselves add they spoil all that their friends have conferred to
the promoting their esteem.
Some there are who flatter themselves, till they are stupidly puffed
up; others allure a man to talk of himself, and take him by casting
some little gilded temptation in his way; and another sort for a little
sport will be putting questions, as those in Menander to the silly
braggadocio soldier:
How did you get this wound?
By a furious dart.
For heaven’s sake, how?
As from my scaling ladder
I mounted the proud walls. See here! Behold!
Then I proceed to show my wound
With earnest look; but they spoiled all with laughter.
22. We must be watchful in all these cases, that we neither of
ourselves drop into our own inconvenient praises, nor be hooked into
them by others. Now the best and most certain way of security is to
look back upon such as we can remember guilty of this fault, and to
consider how absurd and ugly it is accounted by all men, and that
hardly any thing is in converse a greater disturbance than this.
Hence it is that, though there be no other quality in such persons
unpleasing, yet, as if Nature had taught us to abhor and fly it, we
hasten out to get a little fresh air; and even the very parasite and
indigent flatterers are uneasy, when the wealthy and great men by whose
scraps they live begin to admire and extol themselves; nay, they give
out that they pay the greatest portion of the shot, when they must give
ear to such vanities. Therefore he in Menander cries out,
They kill me—I am a macerated guest—
With their wise sayings and their soldier’s brags;
How base these gloriosos are!
But these faults are not only to be objected against common soldiers
and upstarts who detain others with gaudy and proud relations of their
own actions, but also against sophists, philosophers, and commanders
who grow full of themselves and talk at a fastuous rate. Therefore it
is fit we still remember that another’s dispraise always accompanies
the indiscreet praises of ourselves; that the end of vain-glory is
disgrace; and that, as Demosthenes tells us, the company will both be
offended and judge otherwise of us than we would have them.[186] Let
us then forbear to talk of ourselves, unless the profit that we or our
hearers may thence probably reap be considerably great.