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 right are two lovers; on his left an aged student still
pores over his work by the last rays of the dying sun; while in the
shadow of the group may be seen the form of a little child chasing a
butterfly.