In 1883 Myers had married Nora Margaret, daughter of the Rev. Samuel Lodge, rector of Scrivelsby, Lincolnshire; they had two sons and three daughters. In 1891 the family moved to a house at Chislehurst on the edge of Paul's Cray Common [see A Common in Gathered Poems]. Here Myers remained for the rest of his life, abandoning the habit of continental travel to which some of his best poems bear witness, but paying a weekly visit to London in order to see friends and to attend the council meetings of the Society for the Protection of Women and Children. Most of the verse composed in these years is included in Gathered Poems (1904), a collection containing also what he thought best in the volumes previously published. He died at Fontridge, Etchingham, Sussex, 25 November 1921. He was survived by his wife, one son, and two daughters; one daughter had died in infancy, and his elder son was killed while serving in France in 1918.
The most obvious characteristic of Myers's writings is his enthusiasm for Greece. His essay on Aeschylus gained much more attention than his biography of Lord Althorp. The excellence in scholarship, diction, and rhythm of his prose translations of Homer and Pindar is generally recognized. The volume of Gathered Poems opens with a group entitled Hellenica; and the next group, Loca Carmine Digna, celebrates first Arcadia, Ithome, and a tomb in Athens. In a sonnet addressed to Pindar he describes Hellas as the ‘first fruit and best of all the western world’, and declares that ‘Whate'er we hold of beauty, half is hers’. The poems on Greek subjects illustrate also a second obvious trait, his enthusiasm for the heroic. The ‘crown of Being,’ he writes, ‘fairer far than stream, or sky, or star,’ is a ‘heroic soul’ [Gathered Poems, p. 124]. And this enthusiasm is not less marked in the poems which celebrate men of later times, for instance, King Alfred, Milton [see the drama so entitled and Gathered Poems, p. 120], Mazzini and Garibaldi [see The Defence of Rome], and General Gordon.
[Private information; personal knowledge.]
NARES, Sir GEORGE STRONG (1831–1915), admiral and Arctic explorer, was born 24 April 1831 at Aberdeen, the son of Commander William Henry Nares, R.N., of Aberdeen, and great-grandson of the judge, Sir George Nares [q.v.]. His mother was Elizabeth Gould, daughter of John Dodd, of Redbourn, Hertfordshire. He entered the navy in 1845 from the Royal Naval College, New Cross, and after serving some years in the Pacific was appointed mate in H.M.S. Resolute, one of the five vessels employed by Sir Edward Belcher [q.v.] in his expedition of 1852 in search of Sir John Franklin [q.v.]. From winter quarters at Dealy Island, to the south of Melville Island, Nares took part in several sledge journeys which gave him valuable experience in Arctic travel. Returning to England in 1854 he was promoted lieutenant, served for two years in the Mediterranean, and took part in the Crimean War. After several years' work in training-ships for naval cadets, including the Illustrious, Britannia, and Boscawen, he was posted to the Australia station, having been promoted commander in 1862. In 1867 he commissioned the Newport for hydrographical work in the Mediterranean, which included a survey of the Gulf of Suez. In the Shearwater he did similar work, including oceanographical researches in the Gibraltar current and a survey from Suez to Koseir.
Nares's experience earned him the post of captain of H.M.S. Challenger, a wooden corvette of 2,306 tons, which was dispatched by the government in December 1872 on a voyage of exploration of the Southern oceans. Nearly a year was spent by the expedition in the Atlantic, which was crossed several times, and in October 1873 Cape Town was reached. After leaving Simon's Bay in December, the Challenger visited the little-known islands of Marion, Kerguelen, and Heard, before making a short visit to the Antarctic regions. The vessel was not built for ice navigation and no attempt was made to push far south; it was, however, the first steamship to cross the Antarctic Circle (66° 40′ S., 78° 22′ E.). The chief geographical result of the southern venture was the dredging of glaciated fragments of continental rocks and deep-sea muds; this furnished convincing evidence of the existence of a continent in the far south. In November 1874 the Challenger reached Hong Kong, and Nares was recalled to England in order to lead a government Arctic expedition in the vessels Alert and Discovery, the chief aim of which was to reach the Pole. Reports of the American expeditions of L. L. Hayes, 1860–1861, and C. F. Hall, 1870–1873, had led to the belief in an open polar sea and land extending far to the north, on the west of Robeson channel. Both these theories proved to be wrong, but, at the time, they
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