In thy soft lineaments I trace,
More winning daily grown,
The sweetness of thy mother's face
Transfiguring my own.
        (Infant Eyes, 5-8)

1. Infant Eyes

Notes on Life and Works

Born at Keswick on October 13, 1844, Ernest James Myers received his education in classics at Cheltenham and Balliol College Oxford. He became a fellow of Wadham College in 1868, where he taught for three years, and then moved to London for twenty years to make his living as a translator and editor. Best known for his collaboration with Andrew Lang and Walter Leaf on books XVII-XXIV of Homer's Iliad (popularized in a Modern Library edition), Myers also translated Pindar, wrote on Aeschylus, and published five volumes of poetry in his lifetime, most modelled on Greek and Latin themes. These were The Puritans (1869), Poems (1877), The Defence of Rome (1880), The Judgement of Prometheus (1886), and Gathered Poems (1904). While in London, Myers wed Nora Margaret Lodge, and they had five children. He served as Secretary of the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching and worked as a volunteer for the Charity Organization Society and the Society for Protection of Women and Children. The Myers family left London for Chislehurst in 1891. His older son, who seems to be the subject of "Infant Eyes," died as a soldier in France in 1918. Myers died on November 25, 1918, in Etchingham, Sussex.

• Bell, A. C. "Myers, Ernest James (1844–1921)." Rev. Megan A. Stephan. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
• Homer. The Iliad of Homer done into English prose by Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf and Ernest Myers. London: Macmillan, 1883. PA 4025 .A2L3 Institute for Medieval Studies.
• Myers, Ernest. Gathered Poems. London: Macmillan, 1904. LE M9962g Robarts Library.
• --. Lord Althorp. London: R. Bentley. 1890. DA 536 .S7M8 Robarts Library.
• Pindar. The Extant Odes of Pindar. Trans. Ernest Myers. PA 4275 .E5M9 1874. Robarts Library.

Biographical information

Given name: Ernest
Family name: Myers
Birth date: 13 October 1844
Death date: 25 November 1921
Nationality: English
Family relations
          father: Frederic Myers
          mother: Susan Harriet Myers
          wife: Nora Margaret Myers (from 1883)
          brother: Frederic William Henry Myers
Languages
          English
          Latin
          Greek
Education
          Cheltenham to 1863
          Balliol College, Oxford: 1863
Honours
          First class in classical moderations: 1865
          Gaisford prize for Greek verse: 1865
Literary period: Victorian
Occupations
          Administrator, Charity Organization Society
          Secretary to the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching: 1876 to 1881
Residences
          Keswick: 13 October 1844
          London: 1871 to 1891
          Paul's Cray Common, Chislehurst: 1891
Cause of death: Pneumonia
First RPO edition: 2001