I found, however, a pair of sentences, whose construction I don't get completely. Here we go:
1)"I don't know that I shall tell you that, Mr Gray"
I suppose it means that the speaker doesn't know, whether he should tell something to Dorian. I don't understand why is it built in this fashion. Looking at it alone it seems as the speaker doesn't know whether he has to tell something to Dorian or not.
As a side question I would like to ask about the difference between "shall" and "will". Is it still respected at least partially in modern English? I mean also formal or literary English, not just colloquial speech of course.
2)"It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were".
The lad is Dorian, and the sentence appears at the end of Harry's thoughts about Dorian's parentage. It means that his unfortunate parentage made him appear even more charming. As for the other sentence I don't understand completely the construction Wilde used. Especially that final "it + subjunctive (were)".
Thank you in advance.
