Of Edwin Edwards the artist I should like to take this opportunity of saying a word. His name is little known outside artistic circles, and it would be somewhat unfair to advertise it in connection with an etched plate which failed to give satisfaction without at the same time making allusion to pictorial work which was successful and meritorious. That he did produce work of real value is evident from the fact that one of his oil pictures of the Thames hangs at the Luxembourg in the Salle des Étrangers (for he was always more appreciated in France than in England), and that two years ago another canvas, and that hardly one of the best examples of his {189} work, was chosen by Sir Edward Poynter to be well hung in the Tate Gallery. [Illustration: The suppressed frontispiece For “Omar Khayyam.” (_By Edwin Edwards_)] It may also be mentioned that high appreciation of his talents has been shown across the Channel by eulogistic articles in the _Gazette des Beaux Arts_, _Les Beaux Arts Illustrés_, _La Vie Moderne_, _L’Art_, etc., etc. It is, however, on his work as an etcher that his reputation must chiefly rest, and it would be more than unjust to allow the artist who produced such a _tour de force_ as the great etching of “London from the Greenwich Observatory,” to mention only one of his three hundred and seventy-one works in this medium, to be advertised by an etching, finely conceived it is true, but unsatisfactorily carried to an issue. Not that these facts will in any way affect the thoroughgoing rarity-hunter in his estimate of the suppressed plate here described. It will be enough for him to know that not more than a quarter of a hundred of his rivals can own a proof of the etching to make him ready to sell his last shirt for its acquisition. He will continue to value a print for its rarity rather than for its beauty, {190} a book for its height in millimetres rather than for its depth in thought. No doubt these be hard words. Then why, it will be asked, pander to so foolish a passion? Shall I confess? Yes, indeed, and glory in the confession that I, too, am of the gentle brotherhood, that I, too, am a subscriber to _The Connoisseur_ (or “The Connoyzer,” as one of my friends at Mr. W. H. Smith’s bookstall used to call that delightful publication), that I, too,—in fine, that I am, by the favour of Fortune, the happy possessor of two proofs of the suppressed etching to the Omar of 1872!