3 DECEMBER 1870, Page 20

BIITER IS THE RIND.*

FOR a novel not vivified by exceptional literary genius, not marked by any very profound study of recondite character, not fascinating the reader by the spell of a highly organized plot, and not depending for its interest upon some thoroughly exploited specialty,—in short, for a novel without pretensions to the abso- lutely highest class in any department of fiction, Bitter is the Rind is the best that has come under our notice for many a day. In fact, we are by no means sure that in its more than average excellence in each department, and its all but absolute freedom from serious defects of any kind whatsoever, it is not entitled to a special first-class of its own, certainly the collective benes which the discriminating critics must feel bound to award Mr. Smart, in the various branches of his art, warrant the bestowal upon him of an accumulated optime for general literary good conduct, and especially for his manifest sense of the deep responsibility which rests upon the shoulders of a man who has already written one good novel and to whom therefore one looks with implicit reliance for, at least, a morning's rational, and not too severely intellectual, enjoyment. There is no feeling much more bitter than that with which one regards the personally unknown author who deludes you, on the strength of one readable story, into com- mitting your happiness for the next few hours and your peace of mind for the day into his hands, and then gives you cause to throw down his volumes and rush off to billiards or croquet, with a bitter cry of "Betrayed, betrayed!" But Mr. Smart is not as they are. Bitter is the Rind is the sort of novel—rare enough, we are sorry to say—that one takes up at breakfast with one's second cup of coffee, after dismissing the last balloon from Paris, the last panic on the Stock Exchange, and Prince Gortachakoff's last contribution to the polite letter-writer of the period, with your first. You see at a glance that one day, at least, is reserved from the devouring fiend of boredom. With your first cigar and the first volume you become fairly amused, with your second of each, thoroughly interested, you wonder all lunch what is going to come of it all, and when fortified with a glass of sherry, you again take up the thread of the story, you face the trials and troubles of your friends—for such they have become long ere this —and watch the machinations of their enemies with something very like positive anxiety, quite sufficient to carry you through to the satisfactory denouement with the keenest of interest, and not too great to mar your appreciation of an occasional chapter of club er green-room conversation worthy of Mr. Shirley Brooks, before he got lazy and took to turning out epigrams by machine instead of by hand ; and occasional descriptions of certain scenes of London " life," such as Mr. Edmund Yates used to do so well at one period of his existence, only free from that all-pervading presence of Mr. Edmund Yates himself which might be so advantageously dis- pensed with in them. And when you go out for your afternoon constitutional you feel, in a literary sense, like Sidney Smith's epicure after his salad. Thackeray is gone, George Eliot's publishers make no sign, Paris balloons have other things to carry besides yellow-and-green volumes from Hachette's, you have only just re-read Dickens ; but still, "serenely full," "fate cannot harm you," to-day you have read a novel as good in its way as the salad which, according to the poetic gourmet, " would tempt a dying anchorite to eat."

And it is a novel, too, which the reader is sure to revert to over his last cigar at night. You find yourself thinking what a charming, clever, self-possessed, and yet warm-hearted little creature that Katie Moseley must have been, and bow certainly you would have fallen most desperately in love with her if you had gone fishing every

* Bit tier ie the Rind. By Hawley Smart, a role. London : Bentley 1870.

day with her along that pretty Lincolnshire trout stream, as poor, lazy, purposeless, good-hearted Foster Merrington did ; and what a shame it was that old Sir Giles De Driby cut him off because he wanted to marry her,—the daughter of that curious old steward, half " northern farmer " of a higher type, with his half-feudal veneration for the De Dribys, and with his whole soul wrapped np in the daughter he has " made a lady of." And yet you would like to have met Sir Giles in conversation, just to see what a perfect specimen of the polished old Pagan, whose vices and manners were both dated from the last century, was like,—an old man stern in pride, relentless in hatred, bitter in gibe, gravely cynical as to human nature, perfect in manner, contemptuous towards the men of the day, and regretful of the time of his youth, when men were as ready with an epigram as with a shot, and before " a coarse, vulgar banter, denominated in your glossary ' chaff,' had taken the place of the rapier-like repartee " he could recollect. And then you think what a pity it was Fortie got into that fast gambling set at the ironically-named Thalamus Club, and you reflect, with his whole career before you, on what a bad thing it was for him to win that exciting handicap at the Gun Club, that only lured him on to ruin, though it was a horrid sell that objection to Trismegistus at the Leger beiug sustained after he thought he had won enough to clear him. Then your mind turns to the scenes in the smoking-room at the Thalamus, and you cannot help admiring Fortie for fighting that duel with the black-leg roue, the Honourable Jim Halden, to clear the character of that noble- hearted Lizzie Jerningham, the actress, which calmed such awful mischief afterwards. True, it was wrong in Katie to throw her lover over without giving him a chance of explanation ; but then his arm was wounded, and he couldn't write, circumstances looked against him, and there were plenty of people at hand ready to make her believe she had been cruelly deceived. Then it was dreadfully hard lines that Fortie's ruin should come just when it did, and that the scheme of his ambitious cousin the Rector's for driving him from the country by buying up all his I.O.U.'s should succeed just in time to prevent his getting old Sir Giles' letter of humiliation before he went out hopelessly to New York. But Fortie turned out more of a man than you expected, and he fully deserved his good luck out there,—his meeting the 'cute and eccentric Yankee theatre-manager, who proved such a good friend ; and the strange chance that brought him in contact with people who were able to make it all right at home after all his strange American adventures. How glad you are, too, to think that he got home to find Katie still all well, after all her long suffering, all his affairs going well, and the Rector—now the Baronet also—compelled to content himself with the " Bitter Rind" of the fruit he had so covetously and unscrupulously obtained. Your thoughts stray for a moment perhaps to some of the capital bits of description in which the American part of the story abounds. If you have been to Saratoga, the American Baden, for example, you realize the place again in Mr. Smart's vivid sketch ; and if not, you feel curious to go and study its unique and indigenous phenomena ; and you finally take up the thread of some one of Mr. Smart's light but very suggestive little essayettes on character, and go off to bed, suddenly breaking the train of thought to recollect what a capital thing it was that that girl Lizzie Jerningham, whom you admire so much, got over her liking for Fortie, and married that very good fellow Fripley Furnival.

We don't mean to say, by the way, that Bitter is the Rind is a story only for those who have nothing to 'do but read novels and who do it. On the contrary, it is exactly the sort of book for those who take their novels as a means of pleasant recreation and legitimate distraction from graver affairs,—exciting enough to fully occupy the mind, without being morbidly sensational, full of variety of scene and people, and with what, after all, we have a weakness for,—a pleasant ending. Bitter is the Rind is a book we can recommend heartily, and we do not fancy that anyone who can enjoy a really good novel will regret having taken our recommendation.