"The propriety of the selection which was made by the Institute of France, of Wollaston, Davy, and Young, as the most eminent representatives of English science in that age, was disputed by very few of their contemporaries... If Young held the lowest place in the order of precedency then, he unquestionably occupies the highest now. The most brilliant achievements of Davy, whether considered singly or collectively, are probably surpassed in importance by the discovery and demonstration of the interference of light; but whilst the first received the prompt and unhesitating acknowledgment of the scientific world and at once secured for their author the honours and rewards which were due to his merits, the second, even after emerging from a long period of misrepresentation and neglect, had to make its way, step by step... against the opposition of adverse and long established theories, supported by the authority of the two greatest men known to the scientific history of the past and the present age; and it only received a tardy and reluctant recognition—and that rather by implication than avowedly—when near the close of his life, the was awarded by the Royal Society to Fresnel, who completed the structure of which Dr. Young had laid the foundations. If we refer to his other scientific works, embracing so wide a range of subjects, and some...—more especially his essays on the tides and the cohesion of fluids—so remarkable for the boldness and originality of their treatment, we shall find that they were rarely read and never appreciated by his contemporaries, and even now are neither sufficiently known nor adequately valued: whilst if justice was awarded more promptly and in more liberal measure... to his hieroglyphical labours, these also were singularly unfortunate... by coming into collision with adverse claims which were most unfairly and unscrupulously urged in his own age, and not much less so... in very recent times. The great variety also of his titles to commemoration as a classical scholar and archaeologist, a medical writer, an optician, a mathematician, or a physical philosopher, increases the difficulty of judging his relative rank amongst men of celebrity, whether they were his contemporaries or not: for the position which he might not venture to claim... to any single department of human knowledge, might be readily conceded to him when his combined labours were taken into consideration."