Long before series like The Library of America, the NYRB Classics or La Bibliothèque de la Pléiade were gleams in their respective publishers' eyes, a series was launched that was, literally, fit for a king:
The series we know today as the Delphin Classics was begun in 1670 for the edification of the young Louis, le Grand Dauphin. (Because he predeceased his father, Louis XIV, he never ascended the French throne.)
This series of classical Latin authors is so called because the title page of each volume bears the inscription in usum serenissimi Delphini (for the use of the Most Serene Dauphin):
Because the young heir's classical education was so important, inappropriate passages from each of the volumes in the series were expurgated by the thirty-nine scholars who worked on the series under the direction of Pierre Daniel Huet, one of the most erudite men of the time.
Wilfred Mustard (a 19th century Latin professor at Haverford College) relates in Vol. 28 of the Transactions & Proceedings of the American Philological Association that the series originally was suggested by the Duke of Montausier, who had become the Dauphin's governor in 1668, about the time the heir to the throne reached seven years of age. Huet, appointed the Dauphin's sub-preceptor two years later, introduced several features to the series, most notably
the interpretatio, which was placed under the text of the Latin poets, and a complete verbal index, which accompanied each author. One of his favorite projects was to combine all the indexes of the series, and to compile out of them a general index which "would have traced out the exact limits of the Latin language, and would have enabled one to see at a glance, with certainty, the birth and age of each word, its uses and significance, its rise, duration, decay, extinction."
The various expurgations notwithstanding, Huet's addition of commentaries, indices, notes and appendices did much to insure the popularity of the series with a wider reading public over several succeeding centuries. The series was extremely popular among schools and colleges in both France and England, and it was reprinted numerous times during the next 200+ years. The most notable such reprint probably was that of A. J. Valpy, issued in 159 volumes from 1819-1830:
Mustard closes his appreciation of the series by noting that the series' great popularity may have been
a mark of the low state of scholarship rather than of their own merit; but the merit of the books is relative to the age in which they [first appeared], and in estimating this famous series we should pay due regard to the state of classical criticism at that epoch. For various reasons, ancient learning in France had been suffering a gradual decay since the time of Francis I, and the ancient literatures had become less and less popular.... Under such circumstances, the appearance of compendious editions of forty Latin authors, or titles, prepared by the best scholars available in France, published at great expense in a magnificent quarto..., paid for out of the royal treasury and thus stamped with the royal approval, must have done much to popularize classical study....
Today's book collector can pick up individual 17th-19th century volumes of the series' various reprints for very little money, though much patience will be required to find volumes in anything approaching Fine condition. (Remember, the volumes in this series were utilized primarily as schoolbooks, with all that that implies about usage....)
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