[1] In Isaiah we see prophetic authorship reaching its culminating point. Everything conspired to raise him to an elevation which no prophet before or after could as writer attain. Among the other prophets, each of the more important ones is distinguished by some one particular excellence, and some one particular talent. In Isaiah all kinds of talent, and all beauties of prophetic discourse, meet together, so as mutually to temper and qualify each other; it is not so much any single feature that distinguished him as the symmetry and perfection of the whole. We cannot fail to assume, as the first condition of Isaiah's particular historical greatness, a native power, and a vivacity of spirit which, even among prophets, is seldom to be met with. It is but rarely that we see combined in one and the same spirit the three several characteristics of--first, the most profound prophetic excitement and the purest sentiment; next, the most indefatigable and successful practical activity amidst all perplexities and changes of outward life; and, thirdly, that facility and beauty in representing thought which is the characteristic of the genuine poet; but this threefold combination we find realised in Isaiah as in no other prophet; and form the traces which we can perceive of the unceasing joint-working of these three powers, we must draw our conclusions as to the original greatness of his genius. But as prophet and as author, Isaiah stands upon that calm, sunny height, which in each several branch of ancient literature one eminently favoured spirit at the right time takes possession of; which seems, as it were, to have been waiting for _him;_ and which, when he has come and mounted the ascent, seems to keep and guard him to the last as its own right man. In the sentiments which he expresses, in the topics of his discourses, and in the manner of expression, Isaiah uniformly reveals himself as the kingly prophet. In reference to the last-named point, it cannot be said that his method of elaborating thought is elaborate and artificial: it rather shows a lofty simplicity and an unconcern about external attractiveness, abandoning itself freely to the leading and requirement of each several thought; but, nevertheless, it always rolls along in a full stream which overpowers all resistance, and never fails at the right place to accomplish at every turn its object without toil or effort.