Unwritten Novel," range between 1844 and 1849. Several of them were purely fictitious, others were thrown off in passing moods or youthful imaginative feeling. Her dramatising instincts, too, led her to give form and feature to every idea that crossed her; while a taste for emotional poetry and for melancholy themes, as well as a want of belief in happiness in general, led her to an involuntary preference for depicting unrequited and despairing attachment.
Occasional verses, however, during this period were rare; she was mostly occupied in working up her drama of "Hannibal," which was first sketched, as we have mentioned, at the age of twenty, and finished on the same plan some three years after, though it was revised and received its final form previous to publication in 1861.
64
