Neither Steele nor Johnson mentions these tales among children’s books; but the “precious treasure” of Wordsworth’s childhood, a “little yellow canvas-covered book”,[30] although it was but “a slender abstract of the Arabian tales,” was within the reach of other children. Wordsworth tells how he and another boy hoarded their savings for many months to buy the “four large volumes” of “kindred matter”. Failing in resolution, they never got beyond the smaller book; yet this, if it had only the tales of the Merchant and the Ginni, the Fisherman, the Sleeper Awakened and the Magic Horse, would build them a city of dreams. Whereas it almost certainly contained the Voyages of Sinbad,[31] and the two apocryphal tales, never doubted by children, “Aladdin” and “The Forty Thieves”.