Is your trumpeter dead, that you arc obliged to praise yourself?. This may be considered as a caution against vain blasting. Act so as to be deserving of commendation; and though you should not meet with all the applause you may deserve, you will have the testimony of your own mind, which will be abundantly satisfactory. Hear, O ye Venetians, and I will tell ye which is the best thing in the world : «To contemn it». Sebastian Foscarius, sometime Duke of Venice, ordered this to be inscribed on his tomb.

You have brought a nest of hornets about your ears, may be applied to persons who have engaged in dispute with men of greater rank or power than themselves; or who have undertaken any business beyond their ability to execute, and from which they cannot extricate themselves without loss. To the same purport is

«Leonem stimulas».

Why awake the lion who may tear you in pieces? and the following

«Malum bene conditum ne moveris».

When you have escaped an injury, or when any dispute or contest in which you were engaged is compromised, and settled, do nothing that may revive it, you may not come off a second time so well. Non destare il can che dorme, the Italians say, do not wake a sleeping dog. And the French, N'as tu pas tort, de reveiller le chat qui dort? were you not wrong to wake the cat that was sleeping? or, Quando la mala ventura se duerme, nadie la despierte, when sorrow is asleep, do not wake it.