Some of these strictures are very similar in spirit to what George Eliot had said in her review of Heinrich Heine, published in 1856, where complaining of the general cumbrousness of German writers, she makes the following cutting remark: "A German comedy is like a German sentence: you see no reason in its structure why it should ever come to an end, and you accept the conclusion as an arrangement of Providence rather than of the author."
"George Eliot"
Mathilde Blind
To turn to the scenic details which form a considerable element of this historical picture, I have already hinted that they are not without a taint of cumbrousness and pedantry.
"George Eliot"
Mathilde Blind
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.
"Rousseau Volumes I. and II."
John Morley