puts it in book II, "He [a patron] chinks his purse, and takes his seat of state [among the poets] ... And instant, fancy feels th' imputed sense" (II 189, 192). He objects not to professional writers, but to hackney writers. His dunce booksellers will trick and counterfeit their way to wealth, and his dunce poets will wheedle and flatter anyone for enough money to keep the bills paid. The plot of the poem is simple. Dulness, the goddess, appears at a Lord Mayor's Day in 1724 and notes that her king, Elkannah Settle, has died. She chooses Lewis Theobald as his successor. In honour of his coronation, she holds heroic games. He is then transported to the Temple of Dulness, where he has visions of the future. The poem has a consistent setting and time, as well. Book I covers the night after the Lord Mayor's Day, Book II the morning to dusk, and Book III the darkest night. Furthermore, the poem begins at the end of the Lord Mayor's procession, goes in Book II to the Strand, then to Fleet Street (where booksellers were), down by Bridewell Prison to the River Fleet, then to Ludgate at the end of Book II; in Book III, Dulness goes through Ludgate to the City of London to her temple. The arguments of the three books A Book I The poem begins with an epic invocation, "Books and the Man I sing, the first who brings/ The Smithfield Muses to the Ear of Kings" (I 1–2) (Smithfield being the site of Bartholomew Fair entertainments, and the man in question was Elkanah Settle, who had written for Bartholomew Fair after the Glorious Revolution; Pope makes him the one who brought pantomime, farce, and monster shows to the royal theatres). The goddess Dulness notes that her power is so great that "Time himself stands still at her command, / Realms shift their place, and Ocean turns to land" (I 69-70), and thus claims credit for the routine violation of the Unities of Aristotle in poetry. On Lord Mayor's Day of 1724, when Sir George Thorold was Lord Mayor, Dulness announces the death of the current King of Dunces, Elkanah Settle. Settle had been the City Poet, and his job had been to commemorate Lord Mayor's Day pageants. Thanks to his hard work in stultifying the senses of the nation, Dulness claims control of all