SELF-PRAISE.
Proverbs xxvii. 2.
“Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips.” Our English adage, “Self-praise is no recommendation,” has its analogue in the Latin: Laus in proprio ore sordescit—“A man’s own laudation of himself is unseemly.” Another bit of good old Latin admonition is, to enlarge rather upon the praises of one’s friends, than upon one’s own: Amicorum, magis quàm tuam ipsius laudem, prædica; which seems to be, however, but a literal transcript of the second line in a couplet from the Greek Anthology:
Ὑπὲρ σεαυροῦ μὴ φράσης ἐγκώμια·
Φίλων ἔπαινον μᾶλλον ἢ σαυτοῦ λέγε.
Syrus, again, utters the caution, “That whoso praiseth himself will soon find some one to laugh at him”—Qui seipsum laudat, cito derisorem inveniet. It was Æsop’s derisive counsel to an unreadable author, who did all his own praising and puffing, and therefore did it well—well, at least, in quantity, if not in quality—to stick by all manner of means to that home-brewed system; for it was the poor creature’s only chance of ever tasting the sweets of praise at all.
“Ego, quod te laudas, vehementer probo,
Namque hoc ab alio nunquam continget tibi.”