SOURCE: “A By-Way in Fiction,” in Essays in Miniature, Charles L. Webster & Co., 1892, pp. 87-103.

In the following mixed review of The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani, Repplier regards the novel as “a series of detached episodes” that “rambles backward and forward in such a bewildering fashion that the chapters might be all rearranged without materially disturbing its slender thread of continuity.”

Now and then the wearied and worn novel-reader, sick unto death of books about people's beliefs and disbeliefs, their conscientious scruples and prejudices, their unique aspirations and misgivings, their cumbersome vices and virtues, is recompensed for much suffering by an hour of placid but genuine enjoyment. He picks up rather dubiously a little, unknown volume, and, behold! the writer thereof takes him gently by the hand, and leads him straightway into a fair country, where the sun is shining, and men and women smile kindly on him, and...