Sentence No. 98 · 3 July 2026
The thoughts of leaving her almost rent his heart asunder; but the consideration of reducing her to ruin and beggary still racked him, if possible, more
Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
Henry Fielding — Tom Jones (1749) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
Notice the semicolon: it joins two parallel weighings of pain, with 'but' immediately following to introduce the counterweight. When you see such a pivot, the heavier-sounding clause typically comes second, and trailing qualifiers like 'if possible, more' belong at the very end.
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 young man weighs love against the ruin it would bring his beloved. 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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