self-gratulating

Tom kept up a whistling, self-gratulating little cry, as if he had his own thoughts:

The Entailed Hat Or, Patty Cannon's Times George Alfred Townsend 1877

This Jeshurun of a pawnbroker was not a symbol of the great Jewish tragedy; and yet was there not something typical in the fact that a life like Mordecai's -- a frail incorporation of the national consciousness, breathing with difficult breath -- was nested in the self-gratulating ignorant prosperity of the Cohens?

Daniel Deronda George Eliot 1849

These, and many more such fragments of a boasting, doubtful and self-gratulating spirit, burst from him in succession; and were, now and then, accompanied with lively gesticulations on horseback, which if a stranger could have seen, they would have persuaded him that the performer was either an unhappy mortal on his way to a madhouse, or a happy lover on the way from his mistress.

Swallow Barn, or A Sojourn in the Old Dominion. In Two Volumes. Vol. II. 1832

The Rover arrested his step, as the other disappeared and stood for more than a minute in an attitude of high and self-gratulating triumph.

The Red Rover James Fenimore Cooper 1820