Samuel Richardson
Lord Byron, Diary, 27 February 1821; Letters and Journals, ed. Rowland E. Prothero (1898-1901) 5:148-49.
What would Richardson, the vainest and luckiest of living authors (i.e. while alive) — he who, with Aaron Hill, used to prophesy and chuckle over the presumed fall of Fielding (the prose Homer of human nature) and of Pope (the most beautiful of poets) — what would he have said, could he have traced his pages from their place on the French prince's toilets (see Boswell's Johnson) to the grocer's counter and the gipsy-murderess's bacon!!!