Sentence No. 120 · 25 July 2026
To be true in his ideas, unanswerable in his syllogisms, and just in his aspirations was not enough for him.
Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers
Anthony Trollope — Barchester Towers (1857) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
This sentence builds a tricolon: three parallel phrases ("true in his ideas", "unanswerable in his syllogisms", "just in his aspirations") all serve as the subject before the verb "was". When you see three matching fragments joined by commas and "and", expect the main verb to follow them.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 8 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. A clever young scholar finds his rhetorical ambitions go beyond mere amusement. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
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