Recent criticism of John Gay's poetry has largely continued to slight its merit or to misread it. Trivia has been especially mishandled, the chief critical faults being the tendency on the part of some to take the poem too seriously and to overlook a number of aspects that reinforce its mock-georgic nature. Gay was completely aware of what he was doing at all times in Trivia, and it is only when one reads the poem closely, with Dryden's translation of Virgil in mind, that a great deal of what he was indeed doing is clearly revealed. Not only did Gay go to Dryden's Virgil for particular phrases: “certain signs” of the weather, the “spoils” of Russia's “bear,” “callow care,” and a number of others, but he also used single words in the unusual senses Dryden had already employed: “infest” to mean “attack,” “contagion” to mean “fire,” “laborious” to mean “undergoing trouble and hardship,” as well as others. There is a whole vocabulary, available in Dryden's Virgil, to which he could have helped himself, in addition to those borrowings that can be demonstrated. A number of passages in Trivia also take their point of departure from Dryden's Virgil. When one adds an occasional clear echo of the Bible or Milton, all intended to enhance the mock-dignity of his poem, there can be no doubt of Gay's poetic competence.