settlement records of the Ghazipur district, an arduous undertaking. He left India in 1889 with the reputation of an excellent officer, hard working, judicious, and accurate.
While in India Irvine devoted his leisure to Indian history. In 1879 he produced a history of the Afghan Nawabs of Fatehgarh or Farukhabad (Journ. Asiatic Soc. of Bengal, 1879). On retiring to England he began a history of the decline of the Mogul empire from the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 to the capture of Delhi by Lord Lake in 1803. The work was based on a wide study of the authorities, chiefly native, and was planned on a very large scale. Various chapters appeared in the 'Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal' between 1896 and 1908, and Irvine accumulated materials down to 1761; but the history itself was not carried later than the accession of Mahomed Shah in 1719. Numerous papers on cognate subjects appeared in the 'Journals' of the Royal Asiatic Society of London and the Asiatic Society of Bengal, the 'Asiatic Quarterly Review,' and the 'Indian Antiquary'; and in 1903 Irvine published a large work on the Mogul army, entitled 'The Army of the Indian Moghuls: its organisation and administration.' He also contributed in 1908 the chapter on Mogul history to the new 'Gazetteer of India.' His last publication of importance was a life of Aurangzeb in the 'Indian Antiquary' for 1911; a résumé appeared the same year in the 'Encyclopédie d'Islam.'
Meanwhile in 1893 Irvine's attention was drawn to the Venetian traveller, Niccolao Manucci, who spent fifty years in India, and was, after Bernier, the chief contemporary European authority for the history of India during the reign of Aurangzeb (1658–1707). Manucci's work was only known in a garbled French version. After a search of eight years Irvine discovered not only a Berlin codex which gives a part of the text but a Venice MS. which supplied the whole. Manucci had dictated his work in Latin, French, Itahan, or Portuguese according as the nationality or knowledge of his chance amanuenses might require. Irvine not only translated but edited it with such a fulness of knowledge and illustration that on its publication by the government of India in 1907 it at once took rank as a classic. Irvine's fame rests mainly on this work.
Irvine was unrivalled in his intimate knowledge of the whole course of Mogul history, and was much consulted by other scholars. In 1908 the Asiatic Society of Bengal made him an honorary member. He was a vice-president and member of the council of the Royal Asiatic Society; he served also on the council of the Central Asian and various other learned societies. He died at his house in Castelnau, Barnes, after a long illness on 3 Nov. 1911, and is buried in the Old Barnes cemetery. In 1872 he married Teresa Anne, youngest daughter of Major Evans, and grandniece of Sir George de Lacy Evans [q. v.]. She died in 1901, and is buried in the same grave with her husband. Irvine left one son, Henry, an electrical engineer in the West Indies, and a daughter.
[Buckland, Dict. of Indian Biog.; The Times, 7 Nov. 1911; Calcutta Englishman, and Journal Roy. Asiat. Soc, Jan. 1912, with list of Irvine's minor writings; personal knowledge.]
IRVING, Sir HENRY (1838–1905), actor, whose original name was John Henry Brodribb, was born at Keinton Mandeville, Somerset, on 6 Feb. 1838. His father, Samuel Brodribb, came of yeoman stock, and was a small and not prosperous shop-keeper; his mother, Mary Behenna, was a Comishwoman. When their only child was four years old, the parents moved to Bristol; later, on their leaving Bristol for London, the boy was sent to live at Halsetown, near St. Ives in Cornwall, with his mother's sister, Sarah, who had married Isaac Penberthy, a Cornish miner, and had three children. The household was methodist and religious, and Mrs. Penberthy a woman of stern but affectionate nature. The life was wholesome and open-air. In 1849, at the age of eleven, the boy joined his parents, who were living at 65 Old Broad Street (on the site of the present Dresdner Bank), and attended school at Dr. Pinches' City Commercial School in George Yard, Lombard Street. Here he acted with success in the school entertainments. In 1851 he left school, and entered the office of Paterson and Longman, solicitors. Milk Street, Cheapside, whence, at the age of fourteen, he went to be clerk in the firm of W. Thacker & Co., East India merchants, Newgate Street. A year later he joined the City Elocution Class, conducted by Henry Thomas. Here he won a reputation among his fellows as a reciter, and was always 'word-perfect' in the parts he acted. His first visit to a theatre had been to Sadler's Wells, to see Samuel Phelps play Hamlet; and he took every opportunity of seeing Phelps act, studying each play
