sedulously concealed, had written manuscripts which had never been
published. The humility of the writers in such cases could be made to
pay too severe a penalty.

No! Men who have merits are not modest! This false virtue is the
appanage of none but weak and irresolute hearts.

We should congratulate ourselves, while admitting these facts, that our
forefathers were not so constituted, and that their faith in themselves,
by giving them confidence in their own work, made it possible for them
to hand these on to their descendants.

Of what use to us would it be to know that a poem of finer quality and
more splendid fire than any we have ever read had once been written, if
the modesty of its author had led him to keep it always in his pocket
and it had finally vanished into the limbo of ignored and forgotten
things?

It is then actually wrong to sing the praises of modesty, which is no
more than distrust of oneself, egoism, and laziness.

The man who boasts of his modesty will feel no shame at producing
nothing. He hides his ineptitude behind this convenient veil whose
thickness allows him to hint of the existence of things which are
nothing but figments of his imagination.

We might add that the man who proclaims his modesty enters the struggle
with a decided handicap against him. The moment he begins to have doubts
about his own powers he will be sure to find himself the prey of an
unfortunate indecision, and that at the very moment when he is called