property, which should keep the subject so treated distinct in feature from every other subject, however similar, and to common apprehensions almost identical; so as that we might say this and this part could have found an appropriate place in no other picture in the world but this?  Is there anything in modern art—­we will not demand that it should be equal—­but in any way analogous to what Titian has effected, in that wonderful bringing together of two times in the Ariadne, in the National Gallery?  Precipitous, with his reeling Satyr rout about him, repeopling and re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk with a new fury beyond the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, fire-like flings himself at the Cretan.  This is the time present.  With this telling of the story an artist, and no ordinary one, might remain richly proud.  Guido in his harmonious version of it, saw no farther.  But from the depths of the imaginative spirit Titian has recalled past time, and laid it contributory with the present to one simultaneous effect.  With the desert all ringing with the mad symbols of his followers, made lucid with the presence and new offers of a god,—­as if unconscious of Bacchus, or but idly casting her eyes as upon some unconcerning pageant—­her soul undistracted from Theseus—­Ariadne is still pacing the solitary shore, in as much heart-silence, and in almost the same local solitude, with which she awoke at daybreak to catch the forlorn last glances of the sail that bore away the Athenian.

Here are two points miraculously co-uniting; fierce society, with the feeling of solitude still absolute; noon-day revelations, with the accidents of the dull grey dawn unquenched and lingering; the present Bacchus with the past Ariadne; two stories, with double Time; separate, and harmonizing.  Had the artist made the woman one shade less indifferent to the God; still more, had she expressed a rapture at his advent, where would have been the story of the mighty desolation of the heart previous? merged in the insipid accident of a flattering offer met with a welcome acceptance.  The broken heart for Theseus was not lightly to be pieced up by a God.

    Lamb’s Complete Works, edited by R.H.  Shepherd (London, 1875).

[Illustration:  BACCHUS AND ARIADNE.
        Titian.]

BACCHUS AND ARIADNE

(TITIAN)

EDWARD T. COOK

But though as yet half unconscious, Ariadne is already under her fated star:  for above is the constellation of Ariadne’s crown—­the crown with which Bacchus presented his bride.  And observe in connection with the astronomical side of the allegory the figure in Bacchus’s train with the serpent round him:  this is the serpent-bearer (Milton’s “Ophiuchus huge”) translated to the skies with Bacchus and Ariadne.  Notice too another piece of poetry:  the marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne took place in the spring, Ariadne herself being the personification of its return, and Bacchus of its gladness; hence the flowers in the foreground which deck his path.