This explains how modesty came to be a virtue. It was invented only as a protection against envy. That there have always been rascals to urge this virtue, and to rejoice heartily over the bashfulness of a man of merit, has been shown at length in my chief work.[1] In Lichtenberg's _Miscellaneous Writings_ I find this sentence quoted: _Modesty should be the virtue of those who possess no other_. Goethe has a well-known saying, which offends many people: _It is only knaves who are modest_!--_Nur die Lumpen sind bescheiden_! but it has its prototype in Cervantes, who includes in his _Journey up Parnassus_ certain rules of conduct for poets, and amongst them the following: _Everyone whose verse shows him to be a poet should have a high opinion of himself, relying on the proverb that he is a knave who thinks himself one_. And Shakespeare, in many of his Sonnets, which gave him the only opportunity he had of speaking of himself, declares, with a confidence equal to his ingenuousness, that what he writes is immortal.[2]
[Footnote 1: _Welt als Wille_, Vol. II. c. 37.]
[Footnote 2: Collier, one of his critical editors, in his Introduction to the Sonettes, remarks upon this point: "In many of them are to be found most remarkable indications of self-confidence and of assurance in the immortality of his verses, and in this respect the author's opinion was constant and uniform. He never scruples to express it,... and perhaps there is no writer of ancient or modern times who, for the quantity of such writings left behind him, has so frequently or so strongly declared that what he had produced in this department of poetry 'the world would not willingly let die.'"]
A method of underrating good work often used by envy--in reality, however, only the obverse side of it--consists in the dishonorable and unscrupulous laudation of the bad; for no sooner does bad work gain currency than it draws attention from the good. But however effective this method may be for a while, especially if it is applied on a large scale, the day of reckoning comes at last, and the fleeting credit given to bad work is paid off by the lasting discredit which overtakes those who abjectly praised it. Hence these critics prefer to remain anonymous.