but of severe satire varied by fierce denunciation, and with a specific minuteness which was concerned primarily with individuals. A fire of criticism from pamphlets, newspapers and reviews opened on his volume of Orations, published in 1823; but the excitement produced was merely superficial and essentially evanescent. Though cherishing a strong antipathy to the received ecclesiastical formulas, Irving’s great aim was to revive the antique style of thought and sentiment which had hardened into these formulas, and by this means to supplant the new influences, the accidental and temporary moral shortcomings of which he detected with instinctive certainty, but whose profound and real tendencies were utterly beyond the reach of his conjecture. Being thus radically at variance with the main current of the thought of his time, the failure of the commission he had undertaken was sooner or later inevitable; and shortly after the opening of his new church in Regent Square in 1827, he found that “fashion had taken its departure,” and the church, “though always well filled,” was “no longer crowded.” By this desertion his self-esteem, one of his strongest passions, though curiously united with singular sincerity and humility, was doubtless hurt to the quick; but the wound inflicted was of a deeper and deadlier kind, for it confirmed him finally in his despair of the world’s gradual amelioration, and established his tendency towards supernaturalism.
For years the subject of prophecy had occupied much of his thoughts, and his belief in the near approach of the second advent had received such wonderful corroboration by the perusal of the work of a Jesuit priest, writing under the assumed Jewish name of Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra, that in 1827 he published a translation of it, accompanied with an eloquent preface. Probably the religious opinions of Irving, originally in some respects more catholic and truer to human nature than generally prevailed in ecclesiastical circles, had gained breadth and comprehensiveness from his intercourse with Coleridge, but gradually his chief interest in Coleridge’s philosophy centred round that which was mystical and obscure, and to it in all likelihood may be traced his initiation into the doctrine of millenarianism. The first stage of his later development, which resulted in the establishment of the “Irvingite” or “Holy Catholic Apostolic Church,” in 1832, was associated with conferences at his friend Henry Drummond’s seat at Albury concerning unfulfilled prophecy, followed by an almost exclusive study of the prophetical books and especially of the Apocalypse, and by several series of sermons on prophecy both in London and the provinces, his apocalyptic lectures in 1828 more than crowding the largest churches of Edinburgh in the early summer mornings. In 1830, however, there was opened up to his ardent imagination a new vista into spiritual things, a new hope for the age in which he lived, by the seeming actual revival in a remote corner of Scotland of those apostolic gifts of prophecy and healing which he had already in 1828 persuaded himself had only been kept in abeyance by the absence of faith. At once he welcomed the new “power” with an unquestioning evidence which could be shaken by neither the remonstrances or desertion of his dearest friends, the recantation of some of the principal agents of the “gifts,” his own declension into a comparatively subordinate position, the meagre and barren results of the manifestations, nor their general rejection both by the church and the world. His excommunication by the presbytery of London, in 1830, for publishing his doctrines regarding the humanity of Jesus Christ, and the condemnation of these opinions by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in the following year, were secondary episodes which only affected the main issue of his career in so far as they tended still further to isolate him from the sympathy of the church; but the “irregularities” connected with the manifestation of the “gifts” gradually estranged the majority of his own congregation, and on the complaint of the trustees to the presbytery of London, whose authority they had formerly rejected, he was declared unfit to remain the minister of the National Scotch Church of Regent Square. After he and those who adhered to him (describing themselves as of the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church) had in 1832 removed to a new building in Newman Street, he was in March 1833 deposed from the ministry of the Church of Scotland by the presbytery of Annan on the original charge of heresy. With the sanction of the “power” he was now after some delay reordained “chief pastor of the church assembled in Newman Street,” but unremitting labours and ceaseless spiritual excitement soon completely exhausted the springs of his vital energy. He died, worn out and wasted with labour and absorbing care, while still in the prime of life, on the 7th of December 1834.
The writings of Edward Irving published during his lifetime were For the Oracles of God, Four Orations (1823); For Judgment to come (1823); Babylon and Infidelity foredoomed (1826); Sermons, &c. (3 vols., 1828); Exposition of the Book of Revelation (1831); an introduction to a translation of Ben-Ezra; and an introduction to Horne’s Commentary on the Psalms. His collected works were published in 5 volumes, edited by Gavin Carlyle. See also the article Catholic Apostolic Church.
The Life of Edward Irving, by Mrs Oliphant, appeared in 1862 in 2 vols. Among a large number of biographies published previously, that by Washington Wilks (1854) has some merit. See also Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age; Coleridge’s Notes on English Divines; Carlyle’s Miscellanies, and Carlyle’s Reminiscences, vol. i. (1881).
IRVING, SIR HENRY (1838–1905), English actor, whose
original name was John Brodribb, was born at Keinton-Mandeville,
Somerset, on the 6th of February 1838. After a few years’
schooling he became a clerk to a firm of East India merchants
in London, but he soon gave up a commercial career and
started as an actor. On the 29th of September 1856 he made his
first appearance at Sunderland as Gaston, duke of Orleans,
in Bulwer Lytton’s Richelieu, billed as Henry Irving. This
name he eventually assumed by royal licence. For ten years
he went through an arduous training in various provincial
stock companies, acting in more than five hundred parts. By
degrees his ability gained recognition, and in 1866 he obtained
an engagement at the St James’s Theatre, London, to play
Doricourt in The Belle’s Stratagem. A year later he joined the
company of the newly-opened Queen’s Theatre, where he acted
with Charles Wyndham, J. L. Toole, Lionel Brough, John
Clayton, Mr and Mrs Alfred Wigan, Ellen Terry and Nelly
Farren. This was followed by short engagements at the Haymarket,
Drury Lane and Gaiety. At last he made his first conspicuous
success as Digby Grant in James Albery’s The Two
Roses, which was produced at the Vaudeville on the 4th of
June 1870 and ran for 300 nights. In 1871 he began his
association with the Lyceum Theatre by an engagement under
Bateman’s management. The fortunes of the house were at a
low ebb when the tide was turned by Irving’s immediate success
as Mathias in The Bells, a version of Erckmann-Chatrian’s Le
Juif Polonais by Leopold Lewis. The play ran for 150 nights.
With Miss Bateman, Irving was seen in W. G. Wills’s Charles I.
and Eugene Aram, in Richelieu, and in 1874 in Hamlet. The
unconventionality of this last performance, during a run of
200 nights, aroused keen discussion, and singled him out as the
most interesting English actor of his day. In 1875, still with
Miss Bateman, he was seen as Macbeth; in 1876 as Othello,
and as Philip in Tennyson’s Queen Mary; in 1877 in Richard III.
and The Lyons Mail.
In 1878 Irving opened the Lyceum under his own management. With Ellen Terry as Ophelia and Portia, he revived Hamlet and produced The Merchant of Venice (1879). His Shylock was as much discussed as his Hamlet had been, the dignity with which he invested the Jew marking a departure from the traditional interpretation of the rôle, and pleasing some as much as it offended others. After the production of Tennyson’s The Cup, a revival of Othello (in which Irving played Iago to the Othello of Edwin Booth) and of Romeo and Juliet, there began a period at the Lyceum which had a potent effect on the English stage. The Lyceum stage management, and the brilliancy of its productions in scenery, dressing and accessories, were revelations in the art of mise-en-scène. Much Ado about Nothing (1882) was followed by Twelfth Night (1884), Olivia—an adaptation of Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield by W. G. Wills (1885); Faust (1886); Macbeth (1888): The Dead Heart, by Watts Phillips
