A curious article by the Rev. Dr. H. J. Lawlor
in the English Historical Review for January shows that there is no foundation for the legend that Dean Swift was buried in his friend Stella's coffin, though the story was accepted by the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Swift's grave in St. Patrick's, Dublin, was several yards away from Stella's. But in 1835, when some alterations in the Cathedral had exposed to view Swift's coffin and another adjoining it, the phren- ologists, who were then meeting in Dublin, obtained permission to examine Swift's skull and that of his neighbour, who was most probably not Stella. Swift's coffin contained only his own remains. When the phrenologists had finished, the skulls were returned to the sexton, who, to save himself trouble, placed them both in Swift's coffin, where they were found at a further exhumation in 1882. Mr. E. Armstrong, in a valuable account of " The Medici Archives " now offered for sale in London, supports our suggestion that " the ideal would be the restoration of the whole to Florence." It would be a modest but timely acknowledgment of the spiritual debt that we owe to Italy.
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