were: "Goody Two Shoes," "Giles Gingerbread," "Tom Thumb's Folio,"
"The Lilliputian Magazine," "The Lilliputian Masquerade," "The Easter
Gift," "A Pretty Plaything," "The Fairing," "Be Merry and Wise," "The
Valentine's Gift," "Pretty Poems for the Amusement of Children Three
Feet High," "A Pretty Book of Pictures," "Tom Telescope," and a few
others. I give abbreviated titles only, but if space permitted I mould
like to quote them in full; they are remarkable no less for their
curious quaintness and their clever ingenuity than for their
attractiveness to both parents (who, it must not be forgotten, are
more often the real buyers of children's books) and the young people
for whom they were written, and they are in themselves most
entertaining and amusing reading. This group of little books
possesses, moreover, another characteristic that is sufficiently
remarkable of itself to be noticed. While they all evince a real
genius for writing in a style suited to the capacities of little folk,
there is a nameless something about them which, far more than is the
case with thousands of other books for the young, is calculated to
enforce the attention and excite the interest of "children of a larger
growth."

Now one of this little group, "The Lilliputian Magazine," is
attributed in the British Museum Catalogue to Oliver Goldsmith; and so
strong is the family likeness in all the books I have mentioned, that
I cannot but believe they are all by the same hand--a belief which I
think will be shared by any one who will take the trouble to compare
them carefully. But I should advise him to rely on the Newbery
editions alone, for grievously garbled versions of nearly every one of
these books have been issued from many different houses throughout the
country.