Note 2 — LETTER XII.
Reading edition
For instance, much as we suppose ourselves desirous of beholding this Bethlehem Nativity, or getting any idea of it, I know an English gentleman who was offered the other day a picture of it, by a good master,—Raphael,—for five-and-twenty pounds; and said it was too dear: yet had paid, only a day or two before, five hundred pounds for a pocket-pistol that shot people out of both ends, so afraid of thieves was he.2