s reporter, who cuts short
what is of temporary interest, condenses what is too amplified for his
limits and for written style, severely prunes down the repetitions which
are inevitable where numerous[*] audiences are addressed by the same man
on the same subject, yet amid all these necessary liberties retains not
only the true sentiments and arguments of the speaker, but his forms of
thought and all that is characteristic of his genius. Such an operation,
rightly performed, may, like a diminishing mirror, concentrate the
brilliancy of diffuse orations, and assist their efficacy on minds which
would faint under the effort of grasping the original.

[Footnote *: The number of speeches, great and small, spoken in his
American half-year, is reckoned to be above 500.]

It is true, the exuberance of Kossuth is often too Asiatic for English
taste, and that excision of words, which needful abridgment suggests,
will often seem to us a gain. Moreover, remembering that he is a
foreigner, and though marvellous in his mastery of our language, still
naturally often unable to seize the word, or select the construction
which he desired, I have not thought I should show honour to him by
retaining anything verbally unskilful. To a certain cautious extent, I
account myself to be a _translator_, as well as a _reporter_,
and in undertaking so delicate a duty, I am happy to announce that I
have received Kossuth's written approval and thanks. Mere quaintness of
expression I have by no means desired entirely to remove, where it
involved nothing grotesque, obscure, or monotonous. In several passages
where I imperfectly understood the thought, I have had the advantage of
Kossuth's personal explanations, which have enabled me to clear up the
defective report, or real obscurities of his words.

Nevertheless I have to confess my conviction, that nothing can wholly
compensate for the want of systematic revision by the author himself;
which his great occupations have made impossible. The mistakes in the
reports of the speeches are sometimes rather subtle, and have not roused
my suspicion. Of this I have been, made disagreeably sensible, by
several errata communicated to me by Kossuth in the first great speech
at New York, here marked as No. VII. (which have been corrected in this
edition.)

Nearly all the points on which attempts have been made to misrepresent
in England the cause of Hungary are cleared up in these speeches. On two
subjects only