The real foe of Dulness, then, is Truth—not simply wit or genius. The night of mind is all that Dulness labours to produce. Misdirected wit and genius help on this consummation, and therefore deserve her smile—all the more that they are her born enemies, turned traitors to their native cause; and most formidable enemies too, had they remained faithful. Needs must she load them with dignity and emoluments. Trace the thought. The poem begins from the real dull Dunces; and their goddess is Dulness, inevitably: nothing can be gainsaid there. This is the central origin. Go on. Pert or lively dunces, who are not real dull, will come in of due course. And from that first foundation the poet may lawfully go on to bring in perverted intelligence and moral vitiation of the soul. Reclining on our swing-chair—and waiting for the devil—with the Æneid in the one hand and the Dunciad in the other, we have this moment made a remarkable discovery in ancient and in modern classic poetry. Virgil, in his eighth book, tells us that the pious Æneas, handling and examining with delight the glorious shield which the Sire of the Forge has fabricated for him, wonders to peruse, storied there in prophetical sculptures, the fates and exploits, and renown, of his earth-subduing descendants. In one of these fore-shadowing representations—that of the decisive sea-fight off the promontory of Actium—you might believe that, under the similitude of the conflict and victory which delivered the sovereignty of the Roman world into the hand of Augustus, the sly Father of the Fire has willed by hints to prefigure an everlasting war of light and darkness, the irreconcilable hostility of the Wits and Dunces, and the sudden interposition of some divine poet, clothed with preternatural power, for the "foul dissipation and forced rout" of the miscreated multitude.
The foe, whose pretensions to the empire of the world are to be signally defeated, advances to the combat—"ope barbarica"—helped with a confederacy of barbarians. Queen Dulness herself is characteristically described as heartening and harking forward her legions with pure noise.
"Regina in mediis patrio vocat agmina
sistro,"
that is, rather with her father Chaos's drum, or the drum native to the land of Dulness. Either interpretation forcibly marks out the most turbulent and unintellectual of all musical instruments; and we think at once of her mandate on a later day,
"'Tis yours to shake the soul
With thunder rumbling, from the mustard-bowl."
The contending powers are presented under a bold allegory.
"Omnigenumque Deûm Monstra et Latrator Anubis,
Contra Neptunum et Venerem, contraque Minervam,
Tela tenent."
Neptune prefigures this island, the confessed ruler of the waves and the precise spot of the globe vindicated, as we have seen, by two great poets from the reign of Dulness. Venus is here understood in her noblest character, as the Alma Venus of Lucretius's invocation, as the Power of Love and the Beautiful in the Universe. The Goddess of Wisdom speaks for herself. Against them a heterogeneous rabble of monsters direct their artillery, under a dog-headed barking protagonist, (what a chosen symbol of an impudent, wide-mouthed, yelping Bayes!) the ringleader of the Cry of Dunces.
Behold the striking and principal figure of the poet himself, armed and ready to loose from his hand his unerring shafts.