His first speech in Boston was delivered the twenty-seventh day of April, 1852, the day that he completed his fiftieth year. When in private conversation I spoke of the circumstance that it was my good fortune to welcome him to the State on that anniversary, he said: "Yes, it is a marked day; but unless my poor country is saved I shall soon wither away and die."
His voice, whether in public speech or in private conversation, commanded sympathy by its tones, even when his words were not comprehended. In his oratory there was exaggeration in statement, a characteristic that is common to orators, but not more strongly marked in the speeches of Kossuth than in the speeches of those with whom he might be compared.
His powers of imagination were not extraordinary, and of word painting he has not left a single striking example,—not one passage that can be used for recitation or declamation in the schools. His cause was too pressing, his manner of life was too serious, for any indulgences in speech. In every speech he had an object in view; and even when he was without hope for Hungary in the near future, he yet announced and advocated doctrines and truths on which he relied for the political regeneration of Europe. He spoke to propositions,—clearly, concisely, convincingly.
In one oratorical art Kossuth was a adept; he deprecated all honors to himself, and with great tact he transferred them to his country and to the cause that he represented:
"As to me, indeed, it would be curious if the names of the great men who invented the plough and the alphabet, who changed the corn into flour and the flour into bread, should be forgotten, and my name remembered.
"But if in your expectations I should become a screen to divert, for a single moment, your attention from my country's cause and attract it to myself, I entreat you, even here, to forget me, and bestow all your attention and your generous sympathy upon the cause of my downtrodden fatherland."
Kossuth gave rise to just criticism in that he appealed too often and too elaborately to the local and national pride of his audiences. This criticism was applicable to his speeches in England and in America.
In every attempt to fix Kossuth's place in the list of historical orators,—and in that list he must have a conspicuous place,—certain considerations cannot be disregarded, viz.:
First, he spoke to England and American in a language that he acquired when he had already passed the middle period of life. The weight of this impediment he felt when he said, "Spirit of American eloquence, frown not at my boldness that I dare abuse Shakespeare's language in Faneuil Hall."
Second, we are to consider the amount of work performed in a brief period of time, and the conditions under which it was performed. Between the twenty-fifth day of April and the fourteenth day of May, 1852, Kossuth delivered thirty speeches in Massachusetts, containing, on an average, more than two thousand words in each speech, and not a sentence inappropriate to the occasion. These speeches were prepared and written in the intervals between the ceremonial proceedings, which occurred as often as every day.