14 MAY 1904, Page 23

The Poet and his Guardian Angel. By Sarah Tytler. (Chatto

and Winans. 6s.)—This book is not so much a novel as a, description of the life in retirement of the poet Cowper. It is always a difficult task to weave in the history of a well-known man with the ordinary material of fiction, and in almost every case both truth and fiction suffer. In the present instance the reader is apt to lose the thread of the story, the personages of which are not very definitely drawn. But there is a pleasant old- world flavour about the book, and the tinge of melancholy which the very mention of Cowper gives is not ungraceful. Altogether, it may be said that The Poet and his Guardian Angel is very restful reading.