Alexander Pope mocked Osborne in the 1743 edition of The Dunciad, where Osborne takes the place of a character, called "Chetwood" or "Chapman" in previous editions, who loses a urinating contest for the love of novelist Eliza Haywood. Osborne had apparently angered Pope by deceptively selling remaindered copies of his translation of the Iliad. Osborne earned his share of praise as well; Thomas Dibdin, writing decades after Osborne's death in his Bibliomania (1809), called him "the most celebrated bookseller of his day."
