How a Man May Inoffensively Praise Himself Without Being Liable to Envy (13-14)

Now as skilful painters, that they may not offend those that have weak eyes, allay their over-bright and gaudy colors by tempering them with darker; so there are some who will not represent their own praises altogether

glaring and immoderately splendid, but cast in some defects, some scapes or slight faults, to take away the danger of displeasure or envy. Epeus intolerably brags of his skill in boxing,

I’ll crush my adversary’s body, break his bones;

yet he would seem to qualify all with this,

Is’t not enough that I’m in fight unskilled?[*]

But, to say truth, to excuse his arrogance with so base a confession is ridiculous. He then who would be an exact man corrects himself for his forgetfulness, ignorance, ambition, or eagerness for certain knowledge and discourses. So does Ulysses when he says of the Sirens,

Thus the sweet charmers warbled o’er the main,

My soul takes wing to meet the heavenly strain;

I give the sign, and struggle to be free;

and again, when he sang of his visit to the Cyclops,

Their wholesome counsel rashly I declined,

Curious to view the man of monstrous kind,

And try what social rites a savage lends.

[*]

And for the most part it is a good antidote against envy, to mix amongst our praises those faults that are not altogether ungenerous and base. Therefore many temper them not only with confessions of poverty or unskilfulness, but even of vile descent. So Agathocles, carousing amongst the Sicilian youth in golden bowls very curiously wrought, commanded earthen pots to be brought in. See (says he) what diligence, laboriousness, and fortitude can do! Once we made muggen jugs, but now vessels of gold. For his original was so mean and contemptible, that it was thought he had served in a potter’s shop who at last governed almost all Sicily.

These are the outward preventions or remedies against diseases that may arise from the speaking of one’s

self. There are some others inward, which Cato has recourse to when he tells us he was envied for neglecting his domestic affairs and being vigilant whole nights in those of his country. So with this:

How shall I boast, who grew so easily,

Though mustered ’mongst the common soldiery;

Great in my fortune as the bravest be?

And this:

But I am loath to lose past labor’s gains;

Nor will retreat from a fresh troop of pains.

[*]

For as they who obtain great possessions of houses or lands gratis and with little difficulty are under the eye of envy, but not if their purchases were troublesome and dear, so it is with them who arrive at honor and applause.