The Ad usum Delphini collection was referred to by
E.T.A. Hoffmann in
Lebensansichten des Katers Murr (1819). „Sie sind, unterbrach ihn der Prinz, ein spaßhafter Mann.“ — Ganz und gar nicht, fuhr Kreisler fort, ich liebe zwar den Spaß, aber nur den schlechten, und der ist nun wieder nicht spaßhaft. Gegenwärtig wollt' ich gern nach Neapel gehen, und beim Molo einige gute Fischer- und Banditenlieder aufschreiben
ad usum delphini. (
English translation: "You are, the prince interrupted, a jolly man." - Not at all, Kreisler continued, I love fun, but only bad, and it's not fun again. At present I would like to go to Naples and write down some good fishermen's and bandit songs ad usum delphini at the Molo.) The Ad usum Delphini collection was referred to by
Edward Bulwer-Lytton in
Devereux, Book IV (1829): let me turn to Milord Bolingbroke, and ask him whether England can produce a scholar equal to Peter Huet, who in twenty years wrote notes to
sixty-two volumes of Classics, for the sake of a prince who never read a line in one of them?" "We have some scholars," answered Bolingbroke; "but we certainly have no Huet. It is strange enough, but learning seems to me like a circle: it grows weaker the more it spreads. We now see many people capable of reading commentaries, but very few indeed capable of writing them."
Honoré de Balzac ''III: Ève et David, later Les souffrances de l'inventeur,'' (1843): History is of two kinds--there is the official history taught in schools, a lying compilation
ad usum delphini; and there is the secret history which deals with the real causes of events--a scandalous chronicle. There is a reference to the Delphin Classics in Part I, Chapter 5 of
Thomas Hardy's
Jude the Obscure (1895), where young Jude, trying to educate himself by reading while delivering bread from a horse and cart, "plunge[s] into the simpler passages from
Caesar,
Virgil, or
Horace [. . .] The only copies he had been able to lay hands on were old Delphin editions, because they were superseded, and therefore cheap. But, bad for idle school-boys, it did so happen that they were passably good for him." ==References==