Emerson's life from 1826 to 1832 has a classic dramatic structure,
beginning with his approbation to preach in October 1826,
continuing with his courtship, his brief marriage to Ellen Tucker,
and his misery after her death, and concluding with his departure
from the ministry.
The journals and notebooks of these years are far fewer than
those in the preceding six years. Emerson noted down many ideas for
sermons in his journals, but as time went on he wrote the sermons
independently. Occasionally he wrote openly about family matters,
but except for the passionate response to Ellen and her death the
journals tell little about the impact upon him of other people and
outside events. The pattern is consistent with the earlier
journals: Emerson used them mainly to record his thought, to
develop and express his ideas. His religious and intellectual
interests were undergoing significant changes in orientation or
emphasis. He was less concerned with the existence of God than with
the nature and influence of Christ. He continued to reassert the
truth of Christianity, but in his growing unorthodoxy he came to
show less and less sympathy with the church, with forms and ritual,
with convention. And he began to wonder whether it is not the worst
part of the man that is the minister.
During these years, Emerson read more in Madame de Stael,
Wordsworth, Gerando, and Coleridge, less in Milton, the Augustans,
Dugald Stewart, and Scott. In style, he moved from a rambling,
bookish rhetoric to the tautness and the cadences that mark his
later "Essays,"
General
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