ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces several individuals, some of whom are well known, others entirely obscure. Dyer fulminates against the class stratification of society in all areas of British life, using transhistorical parallels and contrasts. If Godwin’s Dissenting education influenced the classical education of thousands of early 19th-century children, the rhetorical training of large numbers of Methodists was based on classical oratory. The 19th century saw the gradual decline of Dissenting academies and their provision of an alternative Higher Education. The mistreatment of former Puritans at the Restoration helped to create new and alternative educational institutions where classical authors were favoured as encouraging free thought and informed argumentation, at precisely the time when the gentlemanly discipline of ‘Classics’ was being created in the mainstream Anglican community. The Classics master was John Aikin, the son of a linen-draper from Kirkcudbright, Scotland, and another protege of Philip Doddridge.
