In response to John Emerson, the idea that articles in scholarly journals are otiose to real work in a field may be true in other disciplines, but it’s certainly not true in classical (i.e., Latin and Greek) philology. Probably due to the peculiar nature of the beast, including the minimum thousand year manuscript transmission of the texts and the fact that the languages are essentially no longer spoken.

It may have gotten obscured, but fairly clearly Nietzsche (of whom I am by no means a fan; I personally find Pius IX more sympathetic) was clearly being sarcastic when he changed the delphini to the plural. What he meant about whom I’m not sure.

And for the fellow with the Delphin edition, while I find the prices for out of print academic books inexplicable by rational means, I doubt that any 19th century dolphin is worth very much.

It’s interesting that Nietzsche and his putative great contemporary rival Wilamowitz both employ an allusive manner that assumes a certain attitude to the matter alluded to in order to follow the argument (not an attractive style in my opinion). I was once in a reading group going through Wilamowitz’ Einleitung in die griechische Tragoedie (a book everyone should read), and we were constantly running across allusions that stumped us. I remember locating the proctophilologists in Goethe’s Faust, and an allusion to Cicero that turned out to refer to his very ahistorically speaking Greek in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

Finally, this discussion reinforces an old feeling of mine about the history of scholarship, which probably covers other fields than classical philology. The model usually employed is of great minds setting themselves and the world free from misconceptions; what may well be more interesting is the labors of those who provided the texts that people actually read. Those who don’t know the book will find a remarkable instance of the latter sort of study in Professor Bloch’s book on the Abbe Migne, which has the wonderful (and probably unfair) title God’s Plagiarist.

G’night

But it’s really more of a variorum based on the Delphine edition.

now that I know it might be worth something, it makes me glad I never cracked them open.

getting clear on what Nietzsche meant by using the term in this context is going to require more than that, e.g. a knowledge of N.’s rhetorical habits.

For my money, I’m doubting that ‘future royalty’ really captures what Nietzsche meant by using the phrase in this context.

The general editor was Pierre Daniel Huet (1630 – 1721), who from 1670 to 1680 assisted Bossuet in attempting the education of the Grand Dauphin, son of Louis XIV.

Quoting directly from Sandys (which should be old enough to be public domain):

“Nearly sixty volumes were produced in less than twelve years by the thirty-nine editors at a cost equivalent to about 15,000 pounds.—that’s Edwardian pounds for you economists out there. The project marks an epoch in the history of classical literature in France. Learning had indeed been declining since the days of Francis I, but the Latin Classics, though no longer exclusively cultivated for their own sakes, were still recognised as forming a part of general literature, and popular editions of the ordinary Latin authors were welcome. In addition to a Latin commentary, each of these editions had an ordo verborum below the text, and a complete verbal index. These points were not novel in themselves; the novelty lay in their application to the whole of the Latin authors included in the series. The best known of the editors are (besides Madame Dacier) Hardouin and Charles de la Rue. But the only distinctly scholarly edition was that of the Panegyrici Veteres by De la Baune, while Huet’s conjectural emendations on Manilius prompted Bentley, the next editor of that poet, to describe Huet and Scaliger as viros egregios. All the volumes of the original edition have an engraving of ‘Arion and the dolphin,’ and are inscribed with the phrase “in usum serenissimi Delphini.” The Dauphin, for whose benefit this comprehensive series of Latin Classics was organised by Huet, and for whom the ‘Discourse on Universal History’ was composed by Bossuet, celebrated the completion of his education by limiting his future reading to the list of births, deaths and marriages in the Gazette de France. He died four years before Louis XIV, who was succeeded by the Dauphin’s eldest son.”

I don’t believe that last bit is true, by the way—wasn’t Louis XV the grandson of the Grand Dauphin. But it may provide some context for what Nietzsche had in mind. (By the way, note the presence among the editors of a woman, Anne Dacier, to the best of my knowledge the only woman with children to edit a classical text before Adele Adam in the early 20th century, and perhaps the best French classicist of her time).

However, it’s not clear to me that Nietzsche was thinking of this edition, because there was at least one 19th century reprint by A J Valpy between 1819 and 1830, and possibly another reprint series from France later in the century. These reprints retained the dolphin figure and in usum… from the original. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an example of the original 17th century set, but the 19th century reprints are quite attractive volumes. In fact, in my long ago youth there was a wonderful privately owned (non-chain, in other words) department store in San Francisco called the City of Paris, started during the Gold Rush by French immigrants. In the basement they had a French section called Normandie Lane, which in addition to then exotic cheeses stocked exotic books, among which I remember there were always quite a few Dolphin Classics. Wasn’t smart enough to scoop up any during their legendary going out of business sale.

My assumption was that the latter day Dolphins were sort of the Loeb Classical Library/Bude texts of their day. I don’t know if that is true. Another thing I don’t know is if A E Housman, who is sort of a contemporary of Nietzsche and arguably a rebel against some of the same tendencies in 19th century philology, was alluding to the “in usum serenissimi Delphini” when he marked some of his editions “in usum scholarum.”

Delphinus (from Greek δελφις, δελφιν-, ‘dolphin’) is just the Latin translation of Dauphin. Delphinorum is the genitive plural: “of the dolphins”, i.e. the princes—the Dauphin himself and his brothers, who were always taught privately and for whom textbooks were written by their preceptors (e.g. Bossuet; Condillac wrote one for the Prince of Parma). Ad usum delphinorum was a catch phrase meaning “for beginners”. In the passage from Nietzsche, who is alluding to the Princes who were the original delphini, the sense of the phrase is that textual criticism, collation of manuscripts, etc.—the “dirty work” of philology—is done for the sake of future geniuses who will benefit from trustworthy, well-annotated versions of old texts. If you have a good library nearby, take a look at Heyne’s edition of Virgil’s Æneid. On the first page of the poem, you will see, if I remember rightly, one line of verse. The rest is commentary. Now that’s philology. But if you want to understand Virgil, you had better have some such commentary on hand. The same goes for Nietzsche. Guessing just doesn’t make it.

Nietzsche’s claim may be no more than a jibe at his old profession. If he meant more by it than that, I don’t think it can stand. The hope, faint or bright, of scholars that their works will be useful to the princes of the future is no doubt one motive for writing them. But in a less crass age, such work would be regarded as intrinsically valuable. The writing of it is satisfying in the same way that making well-crafted verse or music is satisfying. Utility is an afterthought, a byproduct.

With the correct spelling, I note that one important feature of these editions is that all of the notes are in Latin as well as the original text. So you only get help from the notes and commentary to the Latin text—if you already know Latin.
http://www.johnpiazza.net/adusumdelphini.htm

now that is a good candidate for what Nietzsche might have meant here: note this bit in the original quote: “…who really know how to use such valuable books – presumably those who write, or could write, books of the same type.”

i.e. Nietzsche may have used the “in usum D.” phrase here to mean “books written by experts, for experts, and of no conceivable use to non-experts.”

you never know with Nietzsche. It wouldn’t be the first time he had suggested that philologists are sexless/neutered etc.

I’ll have to see if I can hunt up that old edition of mine—may not have it any more. I wonder if the phrase became like a royal stamp of approval—the way Eliz. II puts her name on marmalade and what-not.

final query—why the hell did my google searches never take me to the french wikipedia? I have to tweak my preferences, clearly—but I had thought I was searching in all languages.