Newton was widely celebrated in the eighteenth century. He was particularly promoted as a heroic figure by Voltaire, who's responsible for the story about Newton & the apple. From his Essay Upon the Civil Wars of France (1727, the year of Newton's death):

In the like manner, Pythagoras ow'd the Invention of Musick to the Noise of the Hammer of Blacksmith. And thus in our Days, Sir Isaac Newton walking in his Gardens, had the first Thought of his System of Gravitation, upon seeing an Apple falling from a Tree.

Voltaire also wrote of Newton:

If true greatness consists of having been endowed by heaven with powerful genius, and of using it to enlighten oneself and others, then a man like M. Newton (we scarcely find one like him in ten centuries) is truly the great man, and those politicians and conquerors (whom no century has been without) are generally nothing but celebrated villains.

(This is from the twelfth letter of his Lettres philosophiques. My translation is from Peter Gay's The Enlightenment: the Science of Freedom, which has a discussion of Newton as a hero of the Enlightenment on pp. 126-140.)

Gay also mentions a poem by James Thomson ("A poem sacred to the memory of Sir Isaac Newton", whose last stanza, addressed to the deceased Newton, is worth quoting:

From Light himself, O look with Pity down
On Humankind, a frail, erroneous Race!
Assuage the Madness of a frantic World!
But chiefly o'er thy Country's Cause preside,
And be her *Genius* call'd! Her Council steer,
Correct her Manners, and inspire her Youth!
For, guilty as she is, she brought thee forth,
And glorious in thy Name; she points thee out
To all her Sons, and bids them eye thy Star:
While in Expectance of th' arrousing Blast,
When Time shall be no more, thy sacred Dust
Sleeps with her Kings, and dignifies the Scene.

Now, "genius" doesn't always have the same resonances to pre-nineteenth-century audiences as it does to us, but this sort of celebration of Newton becomes more common as the 18th century goes on. (I guess I should stress that I'm talking about the 18th century here--Newton died in 1727 and most of these citations are from around then. Someone else will have to give you a perspective on earlier in Newton's life, which isn't my thing. I also can't speak very well to the "common peoples'" perception of Newton and how that differs from his literary reception; and it's worth pointing you also to pp. 25-26 of Dan Edelstein's The Enlightenment: A Genealogy, which cautions against assuming that Newton caught on quite as quickly in Europe as historical narratives like Peter Gay's might lead you to think.)