ABSTRACT
Tom Jones has a clearly defined mid-point: in IX. 2, the 104th chapter out of 208, Tom is elevated on Mazard Hill, looking back then forward. When he hears the screams of Jenny Waters he symbolically rejects the Old Man (apparent wisdom) by ‘slid[ing] down the Hill’ to rescue her. The ‘just’ division of the novel into two equal halves by Mazard Hill and the balance-image itself mimes that virtue—Prudence— which Tom is striving to acquire. In Tom Jones we have one of the finest expressions of the humanist assumption that the well-made artifact symbolizes the self-knowledge, the moral virtue, of its creator. Although there is no number symbolism, the narrative symmetries in Amelia echo those of the earlier novels, with the volume divisions again fulfilling an elucidatory function. Amelia may be said to pivot round its two central books, VI and VII.
