In such vast schemes there must have been much that was merely tentative.

Also he was ludicrously tentative.

An entire volume might well be written which should embrace only an account of the superstitious regarding death and burial among the Indians, so thoroughly has the matter been examined and discussed by various authors, and yet so much still remains to be commented on, but in this work, which is mainly tentative, and is hoped will be provocative of future efforts, it is deemed sufficient to give only a few accounts.

I started with the purely tentative hypothesis that the person who signed the will was not Jeffrey Blackmore.