Note 155 — ENGRAVED FANS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. PART II.
Reading edition
In Boswell’s Johnson are references to Osborne—to the purchase of the Harleian Library and the publication of the Catalogue, and to the personal chastisement which Johnson inflicted on him:—‘It has been confidently related, with many embellishments, that Johnson one day knocked Osborne down in his shop, with a folio, and put his foot upon his neck. The simple truth I had from Johnson himself: “Sir, he was impertinent to me and I beat him. But it was not in his shop; it was in my own chamber.”’
In Johnson’s Life of Pope, Osborne is thus referred to:—‘Pope was ignorant enough of his own interest to make another change, and introduced Osborne contending for the prize among the booksellers.’ (Dunciad, ii. p. 167.)
‘Osborne was a man entirely destitute of shame, without sense of any disgrace but that of poverty.’ (Johnson’s Works, viii. p. 302.)