To transplant and make him ours, is not only a valuable acquisition to us, but a just censure of the critical impertinence of those French scriblers, who have taken pains to make little cavils and exceptions, to lessen the reputation of this great man, whom nature hath made too big to confine himself to the exactness of a studied stile.

The Duke's attack is puerile cavil, and in spite of the reputed ability of its author the defence must be admitted to be much on the same level.

These are the petty cavils of petty minds; a poet overlooks the casual distinction of country and condition, as a painter, satisfied with the figure, neglects the drapery.

Yet so busy were her enemies at this time, that even this simple arrangement, devised solely for the benefit of the people who were intimately concerned in every thing that tended to diminish the royal expenditure, gave rise to numberless cavils.

How much you ought to guard against letting theoretical cavils discredit in the eyes of the multitude, and finally wrest from it, something which is an inexhaustible source of consolation and tranquillity, something which, in its hard lot, it needs so much, even more than we do.

Then the PRESIDENT rose, and spoke to this purport: It is not without uneasiness that I see the time of the house, and of the publick, wasted in fruitless cavils and unnecessary controversies.

Thus they mutter and object (see the rest of their arguments in Marcennus in Genesin, and in Campanella, amply confuted), with many such vain cavils, well known, not worthy the recapitulation or answering: whatsoever they pretend, they are interim of little or no religion.

Altogether, I began to feel that Christian advocates commit the flagrant sophism of treating every objection as an isolated "cavil," and overrule each as obviously insufficient, with the same confidence as if it were the only one.

This plea of Frischlinus is a mere cavil; and though the poet had obtained his end, which was to divert a corrupted populace, he would not have been less a bad man, nor less a despicable poet, notwithstanding the excuse of his defender.