The late Mr. Christie, the auctioneer, while selling a collection of pictures, having arrived at a chef-d'oeuvre of Wilson's, was expatiating with his usual eloquence on its merits, quite unaware that Wilson himself had just before entered the room. "This gentlemen, is one of Mr. Wilson's Italian pictures; he cannot paint anything like it now." "That's a lie!" exclaimed the irritated artist, to Mr. Christie's no small discomposure, and to the great amusement of the company; "he can paint infinitely better."
SCOTCH DEGREE.
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."