A few years since, a vain old country surgeon obtained a diploma to
practice, and called on Dr. H----, of Bath, with the important
intelligence. At dinner, the doctor asked his new brother, if the form of
diplomas ran now in the same style as at the early commencement of those
honours? "Pray Sir, what might that form be?" says the surgeon, "I'll
give it to you," replied our Galen, when stepping to his daughter's
harpsichord, he sung the following prophecy of the Witches to _Macbeth_:
He must, he must,
He shall, he shall
Spill much more blood
And become worse,
To make his title good.
"That, sir, was the true ancient mode of conferring a Scotch degree on Dr.
Macbeth."