Nothing can be finer than the painter's representation of Bacchus and his rout: there is a "divine inebriety" in the god which is the very "incarnation of the spirit of revelry." "With this telling of the story," says Charles Lamb (Essay on _Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art_), "an artist, and no ordinary one, might remain richly proud.... But Titian has recalled past time, and made it contributory with the present to one simultaneous effect. With the desert all ringing with the mad cymbals 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." 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 "Orphiucus 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.