[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.
De Se Ipsum Citra Invidiam Laudando. Plutarch. ed. William W. Goodwin. Boston. 1874.
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