goldsmith, occupying a shop in Bassihaw, or Basinghall Street; he made money by commercial ventures on the Spanish main, being associated in these with Sir Walter Raleigh; and he was also interested in cloth-making. He was an alderman, and then recorder of Denbigh, and was member of parliament for this borough from 1603 to 1628. In 1609 Myddelton took over from the corporation of London the projected scheme for supplying the city with water obtained from springs near Ware, in Hertfordshire. For this purpose he made a canal about 10 ft. wide and 4 ft. deep and over 38 m. in length, which discharged its waters into a reservoir at Islington called the New River Head. The completion of this great undertaking put a severe strain upon Myddelton’s financial resources, and in 1612 he was successful in securing monetary assistance from James I. The work was completed in 1613 and Myddelton was made the first governor of the company, which, however, was not a financial success until after his death. In recognition of his services he was made a baronet in 1622. Myddelton was also engaged in working some lead and silver mines in Cardiganshire and in reclaiming a piece of the Isle of Wight from the sea. He died on the 10th of December 1631, and was buried in the church of St Matthew, Friday Street, London. He had a family of ten sons and six daughters.
One of Sir Hugh’s brothers was Sir Thomas Myddelton (c. 1550–1631), lord mayor of London, and another was William Myddelton (c. 1556–1621), poet and seaman, who died at Antwerp on the 27th of March 1621.
Sir Thomas was a member of parliament under Queen Elizabeth and was chosen lord mayor on the 29th of September 1613, the day fixed for the opening of the New River. Under James I. and Charles I. he represented the city of London in parliament, and he helped Rowland Heylyn to publish the first popular edition of the Bible in Welsh. He died on the 12th of August 1631. Sir Thomas’s son and heir, Sir Thomas Myddelton 1586–1666), was a member of the Long Parliament, being an adherent of the popular party. After the outbreak of the Civil War he served in Shropshire and in north Wales, gaining a signal success over the royalists at Oswestry in July 1644, and another at Montgomery in the following September. In 1659, however, he joined the rising of the royalists under Sir George Booth, and in August of this year he was forced to surrender his residence, Chirk Castle. His eldest son, Thomas (d. 1663), was made a baronet in 1660, a dignity which became extinct when William the 4th baronet died in 1718.
MYELAT, a division of the southern Shan States of Burma, including sixteen states, none of any great size, with a total area of 3723, sq. m., and a population in 1901 of 119,415. The name properly means “the unoccupied country,” but it has been occupied for many centuries. All central Myelat and great parts of the northern and southern portions consist of rolling grassy downs quite denuded of jungle. It has a great variety of different races, Taungthus and Danus being perhaps the most numerous. They are all more or less hybrid races. The
chiefs of the Myelat are known by the Burmese title of gwegunhmu, i.e. chiefs paying the revenue in silver. The amount paid by the chiefs to the British government is Rs. 99,567. The largest state, Loi Lông, has an area of 1600 sq. m., a great part of which is barren hills. The smallest, Nam Hkon, had no
more than 4 sq. m., and has been recently absorbed in a neighbouring
state. The majority of the states cover less than
100 sq. m. Under British administration the chiefs have powers
of a magistrate of the second class. The chief cultivation
besides rice is sugar-cane, and considerable quantities of crude
sugar are exported. There is a considerable potato cultivation,
which can be indefinitely extended when cheaper means of
export are provided. Wheat also grows very well.
MYELITIS (from Gr. μυελός, marrow) a disease which by inflammation induces destructive changes in the tissues composing the spinal cord. In the acute variety the nerve elements in the affected part become disintegrated and softened, but repair may take place; in the chronic form the change is slower, and the diseased area tends to become denser (sclerosed), the
nerve-substance being replaced by connective tissue. Myelitis
may affect any portion of the spinal cord, and its symptoms and
progress will vary accordingly. Its most frequent site is in
the lower part, and its existence there is marked by the sudden
or gradual occurrence of weakness of motor power in the legs
(which tends to pass into complete paralysis), impairment or
loss of sensibility in the parts implicated, nutritive changes
affecting the skin and giving rise to bed-sores, together with
bladder and bowel derangements. In the acute form, in which
there is at first pain in the' region of the spine and much constitutional
disturbance, death may take place rapidly from
extension of the disease to those portions of the cord connected
with the muscles of respiration and the heart, from an acute
bed-sore, which is very apt to form, or from some intercurrent
disease. Recovery to a certain extent may, however, take
place; or, again, the disease may pass into the chronic form.
In the latter the progress is usually slow, the general health
remaining tolerably good for a time, but gradually the strength
fails, the patient becomes more helpless, and ultimately sinks
exhausted or is cut off by some complication. The chief
causes of myelitis are injuries or diseases affecting the spinal
column, extension of inflammation from the membranes of the
cord to its substance (see Meningitis, exposure to cold and
damp, and occasionally some pre-existing constitutional morbid
condition, such as syphilis or a fever. Any debilitating cause or
excess in mode of life will act powerfully in predisposing to this
malady. The disease is most common in adults. The treatment
for myelitis in its acute stage is similar to that for spinal
meningitis. When the disease is chronic the most that can be
hoped for is the relief of symptoms by careful nursing and
attention to the condition of the body and its functions. Good
is sometimes derived from massage and the use of baths and
douches to the spine.
MYERS, FREDERIC WILLIAM HENRY (1843–1901), English
poet and essayist, son of Frederic Myers of Keswick—author of Lectures on Great Men (1856) and Catholic Thoughts (first collected 1873), a book marked by a most admirable prose style—was born at Keswick, Cumberland, on the 6th of February 1843, and educated at Cheltenham and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he won a long list of honours and in 1865 was appointed classical lecturer. He had no love for teaching, which he soon discontinued, but he took up his permanent abode at Cambridge in
1872, when he became a school inspector under the Education
Department. Meanwhile he published, in 1867, an unsuccessful
essay for the Seatonian prize, a poem entitled St Paul, which met
at the hands of the general public with a success that would be
difficult to explain, for it lacks sincerity and represents views
which the writer rapidly outgrew. It was followed by small
volumes of collected verses in 1870 and 1882: both are marked by a flow of rhetorical ardour which culminates in a poem of real beauty, “The Renewal of Youth,” in the 1882 collection. His best verse is in heroic couplets. Myers is more likely to be remembered by his two volumes of Essays, Classical and Modern (1883). The essay on Virgil, by far the best thing he ever wrote, represents the matured enthusiasm of a student and a disciple to whom the exquisite artificiality and refined culture of Virgil’s method were profoundly congenial. Next to this in value is the carefully wrought essay on Ancient Greek Oracles (this had first appeared in Hellenica). Scarcely less delicate in phrasing and perception, if less penetrating in insight, is the monograph on Wordsworth (1881) for the “English Men of Letters” series. In 1882, after several years of inquiry and discussion, Myers took the lead among a small band of explorers (including Henry Sidgwick and Richard Hodgson, Edmund Gurney and F. Podmore), who founded the society for Psychical Research. He continued for many years to be the mouthpiece of the society, a position for which his perfervidum ingenium, still more his abnormal fluency and alertness, admirably fitted him. He contributed greatly to the coherence of the society by steering a mid-course between extremes (the extreme sceptics on the one hand, and the enthusiastic spiritualists on the other), and by helping to sift and revise the cumbrous mass of
