26 OCTOBER 1889, Page 24

By - Ways in Book - Land. By William Davenport Adams. (Elliot Stock.)—Some of

the ways which Mr. Davenport Adams treads are scarcely by-ways. This need not hinder a reader from enjoying these " essays on literary subjects." If some things that he finds therein should be familiar, others, again, will probably be novel; and he will not be sorry either to make acquaintance with the new, or to renew it with the old. "Elections in Literature," "The Praise of Thames," " Heredity in Song," and Don Quixote in England," are among Mr. Adams's subjects.