The machinery of Middlemarch is clumsy, and the plot desultory in aim and method.

On the other hand, Forster says that one "was ordered to be got ready, but our people being, as usual, very desultory about it, the danger was passed before we could try the experiment.

Artillery fire had been desultory during this march; the big guns that had rolled their thunder miles and miles were now silent.

This second conversation was more desultory than the first; religion was brought in only incidentally, until his Lordship said, "I do not reject the doctrines of Christianity; I want only sufficient proofs of it, to take up the profession in earnest; and I do not believe myself to be so bad a Christian as many of them who preach against me with the greatest furymany of whom I have never seen nor injured.