I shall quote the whole passage in question and shall show that by the most unimportant changes, omissions and transpositions, without losing a word, the whole becomes excellent English, and falls far behind the Reviewer's style in the contention for "cumbrousness": -- ❋ Anonymous (1855)
For while the New York Times was critical of its repetitiousness and verbosity, and critics like Bergen Evans—who would later achieve fame as the question supervisor on The $64,000 Question on TV—found the “cumbrousness of his supernatural machinery” hard going, there was praise for the moral intent of the book, and also for its lyricism and humor. ❋ Donald Sturrock (2010)
Rodbertus said on one occasion that when he imagined productive associations to have extended their activities to include all manufacture, commerce, and agriculture, when he conceived all social work to be effected by small cooperative societies in whose management every member had an equal voice, he was unable to avoid the conviction that the economic system would succumb to the cumbrousness of its own machinery. ❋ Unknown (1916)
Each of them was a plea for the extrication of the simple from the cumbrousness of elaborated pedantry, and for a return to nature from the unmeaning devices of false art. ❋ Morley, John (1905)
Among rationalizing explanations this must surely hold the palm for cumbrousness and complexity, and we may be thankful that the explorer's spade has demolished it along with other theories, and given back to us, as we shall see, at least the elements of a romance such as that which was so dear to the Athenian public. ❋ James Baikie (1898)
Theoretically, it was as ideal tool for such work, its chief drawback being its cumbrousness. ❋ Frank T. Bullen (1886)
This proposition, however, had an air of cumbrousness. ❋ Augustus Hopkins Strong (1878)
[8] Another serious objection to our recent practice is that it tends to confuse the very valuable distinction between a constitution and a body of statutes, to necessitate a frequent revision of constitutions, and to increase the cumbrousness of law-making. ❋ John Fiske (1871)
But Michelangelo did sometimes seek to heighten his style, when he felt that the occasion demanded a special effort; and then he had recourse to the laboured images in vogue at that period, employing them with something of the ceremonious cumbrousness displayed in his poetry. ❋ John Addington Symonds (1866)
The objection was of force, for the defensive armour of the fifteenth century had reached a pitch of cumbrousness that required long practice for a man to be capable of moving under it. ❋ Charlotte Mary Yonge (1862)
One of the principal objections to be urged against the Indian languages, considered as media of communication, is their cumbrousness. ❋ Schoolcraft, H R (1851)
| cumbrousness of the rhythm is apparent in these two | ❋ Paull Franklin Baum (N/A)
And round the gables.] [Footnote 2: "Gleams," it appears, is a Lincolnshire word for the cry of the curlew, and so by removing the comma after call we get an interpretation which perhaps improves the sense and certainly gets rid of a very un-Tennysonian cumbrousness in the second line. ❋ Alfred Tennyson Tennyson (1850)
Some magic that disdains the cumbrousness of nature's progress has wrought this change. " ❋ Charles Brockden Brown (1790)
