What object could he have in writing an elaborate work to support a theory which he knew all the time to be untenable?
"Luck or Cunning?"
Samuel Butler
Perhaps because the situation was so novel, so untenable.
"Garrison's Finish A Romance of the Race-Course"
W. B. M. Ferguson
The victorious Prince left no garrison, because their insignificant works were untenable; but left an humbled people, and marched to the reduction of Lichfield.
"An History of Birmingham (1783)"
William Hutton