Saturday 30 July (continued)

When we got to Greenwich, I felt pleasure in being at the place which Mr. Johnson celebrates in his London: A Poem. I had the poem in my pocket, and read the passage on the banks of the Thames, and literally “kissed the consecrated earth.”

Mr. Johnson said that the building at Greenwich was too magnificent for a place of charity, and too much detached to make one great whole. . . .

We walked about and then had a good dinner (which he likes very well), after which he run over the grand scale of human knowledge, advised me to select some particular branch to excel in, but to have a little of every kind.

—From Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–1763