Still the main point lies here,--that we cannot in the case of Isaiah, as in that of other prophets, specify any particular peculiarity, or any favourite colour as attaching to his general style. _He is not the especially lyrical prophet, or the especially elegiacal prophet, or the especially oratorical and hortatory prophet, as we should describe a Joel, a Hosea, a Micah, with whom there is a greater prevalence of some particular colour; but, just as the subject requires, he has readily at command every several kind of style and every several change of delineation; and it is precisely this that, in point of language, establishes his greatness, as well as in general, forms out of his most towering points of excellence._ His only fundamental peculiarity is the lofty, majestic, calmness of his style, proceeding out of the perfect command which he feels he possesses over his subject matter. This calmness, however, no way demands that the strain shall not, when occasion required, be more vehemently excited, and assail the hearer with mightier blows; but even the extremest excitement, which does here and there intervene, is in the main bridled still by the same spirit of calmness, and, not overstepping the limits which that spirit assigns, it soon with lofty self-control returns to its wonted tone of equability (ii. 10--iii. 1, xxviii. 11-23, xxix. 9-14). Neither does this calmness in discourse require that the subject shall always be treated only in a plain level way, without any variation of form; rather, Isaiah shows himself master in just that variety of manner which suits the relation in which his hearers stand to the matter now in hand. If he wishes to bring home to their minds a distant truth which they like not to hear, and to judge them by a sentence pronounced by their own mouth, he retreats into a popular statement of a case drawn from ordinary life (v. 1-6, xxviii. 23-20). If he will draw the attention of the over wise to some new truth, or to some future prospect, he surprises them by a brief oracle clothed in an enigmatical dress, leaving it to their penetration to discover its solution (vii. 14-16, xxix. 1-8). When the unhappy temper of the people's minds which nothing can amend leads to loud lamentation, his speech becomes for a while the strain of elegy and lament (i. 21-23, xxii. 4, 5). Do the frivolous leaders of the people mock? he outdoes them at their own weapons, and crushes them under the fearful earnest of divine mockery (xxviii. 10-13). Even a single ironical word in passing will drop from the lofty prophet (xxvii. 3, _glory_). Thus his discourse varies into every complexion: _it is tender and stern, didactic and threatening, mourning and again