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372 IRVING 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 imparted to his tendency towards supernaturalism a supremacy which virtually produced the partial suspension of his intellectual faculties. 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 corro- boration 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, although Irving s imagination laid hold of this doctrine as an indispensable contrast to the dark and hopeless foreground of the present, which his morbid and incurable melancholy had led him to represent as robed in the gloomy draperies of the " reign of Satan." Towards supernaturalism he was indeed impelled, apart altogether from any accidental association with individuals, both by certain peculiar blemishes in his character and by its noblest excellences ; and it seemed a foregone necessity that he should become tho moral victim of the struggle between the old and new faiths. He had so imbibed the spirit of apostolic times, and had accepted the old forms of Scriptural truths in such entire good faith, that he virtu ally lived in an atmosphere of which the miraculous con stituted the principal element, and the tendency towards supernaturalism thus associated with a profound moral sincerity was strengthened as well as tainted by alliance with a love of outward magnificence and splendour, and a restless craving after excitement, the result of misused and over-exerted energy. The history of tho remainder of Irving s career is a striking example of the power of one delusive prepossession partly to stifle and partly to frustrate the beneficent exercise of noble mental and moral gifts. Impracticable, visionary, deficient in appreciation of a whole side of human nature, and without real depth of humour, he became the compliant tool of almost any one who offered to supply him with the necessary corroboration of his own absorb ing hallucination. The first stage of his deflexion was associated with the prophetical conferences at Albury, 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 doctrines regarding the humanity of Jesus Christ now generally held by the broad school of theologians, and the condemnation of these opinions by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in the following year, were irrelevant and 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 tho " 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 had 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 consumption," undertook a mission to Glasgow, where, though his "gigantic frame " was now seen to "bear all the marks of age and weakness," and his "tremendous voice" had become "tremulous," he bated no jot of heart or hope ; and even when stretched in utter weakness," and "visibly dying," he, with unfaltering faith in the testimony of the prophetic voice, waited for the moment when God " should bring life and strength." He died worn out and wasted with labour and absorbing care while still in the prime of life, 4th December 1834. The writings of Edward Irving published during his lifetime are 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 introduc tion to a translation of Ben Ezra ; and an introduction to Home s Commentary on the Psalms. His collected works have been published in 5 volumes, edited by Gavin Carlyle. The earlier of his writings abound in passages of finely figurative eloquence rising occasionally into a strain of sublime poetic spiritualism, sometimes breaking out into wild notes of melancholy and touching lamentation, and again hardening into vehement and scornful invective. They manifest, not only a keen sense of the beauties of nature, but a genuine interest in literature and art, a comprehensive if somewhat vague intellectual grasp, and a moral discernment penetrating and subtle, but tending towards narrowness of temper and sympathy. The style, however, is so much influenced in its forms by his study of the older writers as to seem stilf and antiquated, in addition to which many of its finer passages are marred by glaring errors of taste, while there are already signs of that tendency to irrelevancy and diffuseness which imparts such tediousness to his later writings, and along with the exaggeration of his other defects, contributed to deprive them of nearly all literary charm as well as of moral and intellectual worth. The Life of Edward Irving, by Mrs Oliphant, appeared in 1862 in two vols. Among a large number of biographies published previ ously, 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 Caiiylc s Reminiscences, vol. i. 1881. (T. F. H.) IRVING, WASHINGTON (1783-1859), the first American who obtained a European reputation merely as a man of letters, was born at New York, April 3, 1783. Both his parents were immigrants from Great Britain, his father, originally an officer in the merchant service, but at the time of Irving s birth a considerable merchant, having come from the Orkneys, and his mother from Falmouth. Irving was intended for the legal profession, but his studies were interrupted by an illness necessitating a voyage to Europe, in the course of which he proceeded as far as Rome, and made the acquaintance of Washington Allston. He was called to the bar upon his return, but made little effort to practise, preferring to amuse himself with literary ventures. The first of these of any importance, a satirical miscellany entitled Salmagundi, written in conjunction with his brother William and J. K. Paulding, gave ample proof of his talents as a humorist. These were still more conspicuously displayed in his next attempt, Knickerbocker s History of New York (1809). The satire of Salmagundi had been principally local, and the original design of Knickerbocker s History was only to burlesque a pretentious disquisition on the history of the city in a guide-book by Dr Samuel Mitchell. The idea expanded as Irving pro ceeded, and he ended by not merely satirizing the pedantry of local antiquaries, but by creating a distinct literary type out of the solid Dutch burgher whose phlegm had long been an object of ridicule to the mercurial Americans. Though far from the most finished of Irving s productions, Knickerbocker manifests the most original power, and is the most genuinely national in its quaintness and drollery. The very tardiness and prolixity of the story are skilfully made to heighten the humorous effect. The next few years