it
that I am not so mad as to go about to prove that bodily pain were
no pain, yet since it is because of this manner of pains that we so
especially abhor the state and condition of prisoners, methinketh
we should well perceive that a great part of our horror groweth of
our own fancy. Let us call to mind and consider the state and
condition of many other folk in whose state and condition we would
wish ourselves to stand, taking them for no prisoners at all, who
stand yet for all that in many of the selfsame points that we abhor
imprisonment for. Let us therefore consider these things in order.
First, those other kinds of grief that come with imprisonment are
but accidents unto it. And yet they are neither such accidents as
be proper unto it, since they may almost all befall man without it;
nor are they such accidents as be inseparable from it, since
imprisonment may fall to a man and none of them therein. We will, I
say, therefore begin by considering what manner of pain or
incommodity we should reckon imprisonment to be of itself and of
its own nature alone. And then in the course of our communication,
you shall as you please increase and aggravate the cause of your
horror with the terror of those painful accidents.

VINCENT: I am sorry that I did interrupt your tale, for you were
about, I see well, to take an orderly way therein. And as you
yourself have devised, so I beseech you proceed. For though I
reckon imprisonment much the sorer thing by sore and hard handling
therein, yet reckon I not the imprisonment of itself any less than
a thing very tedious, although it were used in the most favourable
manner that it possibly could be.

For, uncle, if a great prince were taken prisoner upon the field,
and in the hand of a Christian king, such as are accustomed, in
such cases, for the consideration of their former estate and
mutable chance of war, to show much humanity to them, and treat
them in very favourable wise--for these infidel emperors handle
oftentimes the princes that they take more villainously than they
do the poorest men, as the great Tamberlane kept the great Turk,
when he had taken him, to tread on his back always when he leapt on
horseback. But, as I began to say, by the example of a prince taken
prisoner, were the imprisonment never so favourable, yet it would
be, to my mind, no little grief in itself for a man to be penned
up, though not in a narrow chamber. But although his walk were
right large and