The Day of Judgement“ was in 1775 added to the Swift canon without question, by inclusion in a supplement to the Dean's works, and its authorship has apparently never been doubted. In the following paragraphs it will be shown that the poem was accepted on insufficient grounds, but that it is authentic. The poem is generally supposed to have been first printed in the Earl of Chesterfield's Letters to his Son (7 April, 1774), its authenticity guaranteed by an accompanying letter in which the earl wrote that he had the original in Swift's own handwriting. As a matter of fact, the poem was first published in the St. James's Chronicle (12 April, 1774) in a letter from an anonymous contributor, and apparently from this source transferred through the Monthly Review (July, 1774) to the fourth edition of Chesterfield's Letters (29 October, 1774). From the Letters, apparently, it was incorporated into the collection of Swift (1775), and thus into the Swift canon. The anonymity of the original source raises doubts concerning the poem's authenticity. From these doubts two references to the poem (both by Lord Chesterfield), one of which could not have been available to a literary forger, clear ”The Day of Judgement.“