painting or impressing the design on the under
surface. The British Museum possesses a Prayer Book bound by Edwards in
this manner for Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III., which is a
very skilful and artistic piece of work. Both he and his father were
also celebrated for the pretty paintings with which they decorated the
edges of the leaves of the books they bound. In 1788 Edwards,
accompanied by his friend and fellow bookseller James Robson, went to
Venice for the purpose of purchasing the Pinelli Library, which they
brought to England, and sold by auction in the following year. Many
other collections of note were sold by him during the twenty years he
remained in business. Having amassed a considerable fortune, he
determined to retire from trade, and in 1805 purchased the fine old
manor-house at Harrow, which for some time was one of the residences of
the Archbishops of Canterbury. A part of Dibdin's _Bibliographical
Decameron_ was written on the garden terrace of this mansion, Edwards
being the 'Rinaldo' of that work. In consequence of ill-health he
determined in 1815 to part with the remainder of his library (a portion
of the books had been disposed of by Christie on his retirement in
1804), and it was sold by his successor in the Pall Mall business,
Robert Harding Evans, who became so well known as a book auctioneer. The
sale consisted of but eight hundred and thirty lots, but it realised the
large sum of eight thousand four hundred and twenty-one pounds,
seventeen shillings. Edwards died at Harrow on the 2nd of January 1816,
and a monument was erected to his memory in the parish church.

Edwards's collection was not a large one, but it contained some
exceedingly rare and choice manuscripts and printed books. Among the
most precious of the former was the famous Bedford Book of Hours, which
he acquired at the Duchess of Portland's sale in 1786 for two hundred
and thirteen pounds, and which was purchased at his own sale by the
Marquis of Blandford, afterwards Duke of Marlborough, for six hundred
and eighty-seven pounds, fifteen shillings. It is now in the British
Museum. Other fine manuscripts were a copy of the Gospels in Greek,
written in the tenth century; _Opera Horatii_, executed for Ferdinand I.
King of Naples, which realised respectively two hundred and ten and one
hundred and twenty-five pounds; and _Regole e Precetti della Pittura_,
written by Leonardo da Vinci, and illustrated with original drawings by