Fielding's two interpolated episodes—the visit to the Gypsy camp and to the Man of the Hill—have close parallels. Both precede examples of Jones's imprudence—the incidents at Upton and his entanglement with Lady Bellaston—but also, more immediately, incidents of his benevolence—the rescue of Mrs. Waters and his assistance to the would-be thief. Both occur when Jones and Partridge are lost, and both are marked, through Partridge's fear, by a sense of the uncanny; just as the light from the Man of the Hill's house had seemed to him supernatural, Partridge sees the light of the gypsy camp as a certain sign of "Ghosts or Witches." In the first episode, Fielding associates superstitious fear with the reign of James I, and in the second reminds us again that such superstition belongs to the past:

Had this History been writ...