(as Virgil expresses it[[163]]) is a disgusting object, but all the more terrible and touching.
Who can recall the punishment of Marsyas, in Ovid, without a feeling of disgust?[[164]]
Clamanti cutis est summos direpta per artus:
Nec quidquam, nisi vulnus erat; cruor undique manat:
Detectique patent nervi: trepidæque sine ulla
Pelle micant venæ: salientia viscera possis,
Et perlucentes numerare in pectore fibras.
But the loathsome details are here appropriate. They make the terrible horrible, which in fiction is far from displeasing to us; since, even in nature, where our compassion is enlisted, things horrible are not wholly devoid of charm.
I do not wish to multiply examples, but this one thing I must further observe. There is one form of the horrible, the road to which lies almost exclusively through the disgusting, and that is the horror of famine. Even in ordinary life we can convey no idea of extreme hunger save by enumerating all the innutritious, unwholesome, and particularly disgusting things with which the stomach would fain appease its cravings. Since imitation can excite nothing of the feeling of actual hunger, it has recourse to another disagreeable sensation which, in cases of extreme hunger, is felt to be a lesser evil. We may thus infer how intense that other suffering must be which makes the present discomfort in comparison of small account.
Ovid says of the Oread whom Ceres sent to meet Famine,[[165]]—