EDWARDS, EDWARD (1726?-1783?), cleric and scholar;
b. at Talgarth, Towyn, Mer., son of Lewis Edwards, ‘esq.’; matriculated at Jesus (Oxford) in May 1743, ‘aged 17’; and graduated in Jan. 1746/7 (B.D. 1756, D.D. 1760). Elected Fellow in 1747, he retained his Fellowship till 1783, and was also (from 1770 at latest) rector of Bessels-leigh near Oxford; from 1762 till 1783 he was vice-principal of Jesus. He resigned in 1783 to become rector of Aston Clinton, Bucks., and according to a letter of Samuel Johnson's he was dead by 1784. Johnson and he were friends and correspondents, and Johnson stayed with him at Jesus in 1782. ‘My convivial friend’ is Johnson's description of Edwards — and the hint is amplified in Richard Morris's account of Edwards's reception into the Cymmrodorion Society in 1763. He was not without knowledge of things Welsh, but was primarily a Grecian. He projected an edition of Xenophon's Memorabilia, published, 1773, an essay on Socratic ethics as mirrored in that book, and by the time of his death had printed the Greek text with a Latin version; his work was seen through the press in 1785 by his friend and fellow-Cymmrodor Henry Owen (1716-1795) (q.v.). [Enw. C. says he d. 2 Sept. 1783, ‘in Wales.’]
Bibliography:
- Foster, Alumni Oxon.;
- Hardy, Jesus College, 177-8;
- Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Birbeck Hill, iii, 367, 529;
- Morris Letters, ii, 531, 565 (or Cymm., 1951, 77).
Author:
Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, C.B.E., D.Litt., Ll.D., F.S.A., (1881-1969), Bangor.
