Isaac Williams wrote a great deal of poetry, first during his solitary curacy at Windrush, and afterwards at Oxford. It was in a lower and sadder key than the _Christian Year_, which no doubt first inspired it; it wanted the elasticity and freshness and variety of Keble's verse, and it was often careless in structure and wanting in concentration. But it was the outpouring of a very beautiful mind, deeply impressed with the realities of failure in the Church and religion, as well as in human life, full of tenderness and pathetic sweetness, and seeking a vent for its feelings, and relief for its trouble, in calling up before itself the images of God's goodness and kingdom of which nature and the world are full. His poetry is a witness to the depth and earnestness and genuine delicacy of what seemed hard and narrow in the Bisley School; there are passages in it which are not easily forgotten; but it was not strong enough to arrest the excitement which soon set in, and with its continual obscurity and its want of finish it never had the recognition really due to its excellence. Newman thought it too soft. It certainly wanted the fire and boldness and directness which he threw into his own verse when he wrote; but serious earnestness and severity of tone it certainly did not want. FOOTNOTES: [27] Mozley, _Reminiscences_, i. 18. [28] I. Williams, _MS. Memoir_. [29] I. Williams, _MS. Memoir_. [30] The history of this famous Tract, No. 80, on _Reserve in communicating Religious Knowledge_, belongs to a later stage of the movement. CHAPTER V CHARLES MARRIOTT