The Adventures of Roderick Random

Reading Melopoyn’s Tragedy and Admiring His Genius

After breakfast, the narrator reads Melopoyn’s tragedy with great pleasure and admiration. He finds the fable well chosen and naturally conducted, the incidents interesting, and the characters beautifully contrasted and well supported. The diction strikes him as poetical, spirited, and correct, with the unities of drama maintained with scrupulous exactness. The opening engages gradually, the peripeteia proves surprising, and the catastrophe affects the reader. The narrator judges the work by Aristotle and Horace’s standards and can find nothing exceptionable except perhaps slight over-embellishment in places, which Melopoyn justifies through a quotation from Aristotle’s Poetics.

Gifting Melopoyn Clothing and Inviting Him to Dinner

The narrator’s friend, moved by Melopoyn’s gentlemanly distress and Christian condition, agrees to clothe him from their superfluities. The narrator sends Melopoyn a bundle of clothes with his compliments and invites him to dinner. Melopoyn accepts both the gift and invitation, appearing within half an hour in a decent dress that greatly improves his appearance. His countenance reveals a heart overflowing with gratitude, and when the narrator prevents his acknowledgments, Melopoyn bows to the ground with tears in his eyes. The conversation shifts to complimenting his performance. At dinner, the narrator requests that Strap be allowed to sit at table with the company, explaining Strap’s importance to him, and the group dines together in harmony.