[1] He did little work as a lawyer, discouraged by what some accounts describe as "a considerable hesitation in his speech", turning instead to literature[2] His father died when Edwards was still quite young, and a sonnet "upon a family picture" indicates that his brother and sisters all predeceased him.
He died on 3 January 1757 while visiting Samuel Richardson at Parson's Green, and was buried in Ellesborough churchyard,[1] with a lengthy epitaph, which describes him as "in his Poetry simple, elegant, pathetic; in his Criticism exact, acute, temperate".
In his preface he hinted that he had originally intended to include a set of canons for literary criticism, but now referred his readers to the occasional comments on the subject he made in the course of his annotations.
In response, Edwards published a "Supplement", in which he satirically remedied the omission by providing an intentionally absurd code of criticism, illustrated with examples from Warburton's notes.
[5] Warburton retorted by appending a note referring to Edwards to a line in a new edition of Alexander Pope's Dunciad, referring to him as "a gentleman, as he is pleased to call himself, of Lincoln's Inn; but, in reality, a gentleman only of the Dunciad", who "with the wit and learning of his ancestor Tom Thimble in The Rehearsal, and with the air of good-nature and politeness of Caliban in The Tempest, hath now happily finished the Dunce's progress, in personal abuse".
Among them were Richard Owen Cambridge, Thomas Birch, Isaac Hawkins Browne, Arthur and George Onslow, Daniel Wray, and Samuel Richardson.