and Endymion" was painted three times--"good,
better, best." A shepherd loved the Moon, who in his sleep descends from
heaven to embrace him. The canvas of 1903 must be regarded as the final
success--the sleeping figure is more asleep, his vision more dreamlike
and diaphanous. "Orpheus and Eurydice" (painted three times) is perhaps
the greatest of his classical pictures. It is one of the few
compositions that were considered by its author as "finished." Here
again the lover through disobedience loses his love; the falling figure
of Eurydice is one of the most beautiful and realistic of all the series
of Watts' nudes, and the agony of loss, the energy of struggle, are
magnificently drawn in the figure of Orpheus. Looking at the canvas, one
recalls the lines of the old Platonic poet-philosopher Boethius:

"At length the shadowy king,
His sorrows pitying,
'He hath prevailed!' cried;
'We give him back his bride!
To him she shall belong,
As guerdon of his song.
One sole condition yet
Upon the boon is set;
Let him not turn his eyes
To view his hard-won prize,
Till they securely pass
The gates of Hell.' Alas!
What law can lovers move?
A higher law is love!
For Orpheus--woe is me!--
On his Eurydice--
Day's threshold all but won--
Looked, lost, and was undone!"

In "The Minotaur," that terrible creature, half man, half bull, crushing
with his hideous claw the body of a bird, stands ever waiting to consume
by his cruel lust the convoy of beauteous forms coming unseen and
unwilling over the sea to him. It is an old myth, but Watts intended it
for a modern message. The picture was painted by him in the heat of
indignation in three hours.

A small but very important group of paintings, which I call "The
Pessimistic Series," begins with "Life's Illusions," painted in 1849.
"It is," says Watts, "an allegorical design typifying the march of human
life." Fair visions of Beauty, the abstract embodiments of divers forms
of Hope and Ambition, hover high in the air above the gulf which stands
as the goal of all men's lives. At their feet lie the shattered symbols
of human greatness and power, and upon the narrow space of earth that
overhangs the deep abyss are figured the brighter forms of illusions
that endure through every changing fashion of the world. A knight in
armour pricks on his horse in quick pursuit of the rainbow-tinted bubble
of glory; on his r