is, 1876).

BACCHUS AND ARIADNE

(_TITIAN_)

CHARLES LAMB

Hogarth excepted, can we produce any one painter within the last fifty
years, or since the humour of exhibiting began, that has treated a story
_imaginatively_? By this we mean, upon whom has subject so acted that it
has seemed to direct _him_--not to be arranged by him? Any upon whom its
leading or collateral points have impressed themselves so tyrannically,
that he dared not treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify a
revelation? Any that has imparted to his compositions, not merely so
much truth as is enough to convey a story with clearness, but that
individualizing 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 a