"Nothing can be a severer trial to a mathematician's character than the publication of his loose papers; but, however crude the speculation, Abel is never lowered. He had read comparatively so little, that all which he has left bears the stamp of his own most original power; and there is not much which fails to leave the impression made on Legendre by his treatment of elliptic functions. ...The frankness of the acknowledgment made by Legendre, and the spirited manner in which the old man set to work to incorporate the new discoveries into his own books, will never be forgotten by any biographer of Abel. It is unnecessary to specify the particular methods of the latter; all who study the subject of elliptic functions are fully aware how much is due to him."