Paris, his biographer, says that "the enthusiastic admiration which his
lectures obtained is at this period scarcely to be imagined. Men of the
first rank and talent--the literary and the scientific, the practical,
the theoretical--blue-stockings and women of fashion, the old and the
young, all crowded--eagerly crowded--the lecture-room." At the beginning
of the year 1805 his salary was raised to 400 pounds a year. In May of
that year the Royal Society awarded to him the Copley Medal. Within the
next two years he was elected Secretary of the Royal Society. Since 1800
he had been advancing knowledge by experiments with galvanism. The Royal
Institution raised a special fund to place at his disposal a more
powerful galvanic battery than any that had been constructed. The fame
of his discoveries spread over Europe.

The Institute of France gave Davy the Napoleon Prize of three thousand
francs for the best experiments in galvanism. Dublin, in 1810, paid Davy
four hundred guineas for some lectures upon his discoveries. The Farming
Society of Ireland gave him 750 pounds for six lectures on chemistry
applied to agriculture. In the following year he received more than a
thousand pounds for two courses of lectures at Dublin, and was sent home
with the honorary degree of LL.D. In April, 1812, he was knighted,
resigned his professorship at the Royal Institution, and "in order more
strongly to mark the high sense of his merits" he was elected Honorary
Professor of Chemistry. In the same month Davy married a young and rich
widow, who had charmed all Edinburgh by her beauty and her wit. Two
months after marriage Sir Humphry Davy dedicated to his wife his
"Elements of Chemical Philosophy." In March, 1813, he published his
"Elements of Agricultural Chemistry." He travelled abroad, and was
received with honour by the chief men of science in all places that he
visited. When, at Pavia, he first met Volta: he found that Volta had put
on full-dress to receive him.