The competitors in this contest are drawn from the unfortunates immersed in what Warburton calls "the common sink of all such writers (as Ralph)--a political newspaper." They were all hateful, partly because they were on the side of Walpole, and therefore, by Pope's logic, unprincipled hirelings, and more, because in that cause, as others, they had assaulted Pope and his friend.

There is Oldmixon, a hack writer employed in compilations, who accused Atterbury of falsifying Clarendon, and was accused of himself falsifying historical documents in the interests of Whiggism; and Smedley, an Irish clergyman, a special enemy of Swift's, who had just printed a collection of assaults upon the miscellanies called Gulliveriana; and Concanen, another Irishman, an ally of Theobald's, and (it may be noted) of Warburton's, who attacked the _Bathos_, and received--of course, for the worst services--an appointment in Jamaica; and Arnall, one of Walpole's most favoured journalists, who was said to have received for himself or others near 11,000_l._ in four years.

Each dives in a way supposed to be characteristic, Oldmixon with the pathetic exclamation, And am I now threescore?
Ah, why, ye gods, should two and two make four?
Concanen, "a cold, long-winded native of the deep," dives perseveringly, but without causing a ripple in the stream: Not so bold Arnall--with a weight of skull Furious he dives, precipitately dull, and ultimately emerges to claim the prize, "with half the bottom on his head." But Smedley, who has been given up for lost, comes up, Shaking the horrors of his sable brows, and relates how he has been sucked in by the mud-nymphs, and how they have shown him a branch of Styx which here pours into the Thames, and diffuses its soporific vapours over the Temple and its purlieus.

He is solemnly welcomed by Milbourn (a reverend antagonist of Dryden), who tells him to "receive these robes which once were mine," Dulness is sacred in a sound divine.
The games are concluded in the second book; and in the third the hero, sleeping in the Temple of Dulness, meets in a vision the ghost of Settle, who reveals to him the future of his empire; tells how dulness is to overspread the world, and revive the triumphs of Goths and monks; how the hated Dennis, and Gildon, and others, are to overwhelm scorners, and set up at court, and preside over arts and sciences, though a fit of temporary sanity causes him to give a warning to the deists-- But learn ye dunces! not to scorn your God-- and how posterity is to witness the decay of the stage, under a deluge of silly farce, opera, and sensation dramas; how bad architects are to deface the works of Wren and Inigo Jones; whilst the universities and public schools are to be given up to games and idleness, and the birch is to be abolished.
Fragments of the prediction have not been entirely falsified, though the last couplet intimates a hope.
Enough! enough! the raptured monarch cries, And through the ivory gate the vision flies.
The Dunciad was thus a declaration of war against the whole tribe of scribblers; and, like other such declarations, it brought more consequences than Pope foresaw.

It introduced Pope to a very dangerous line of conduct.