man, and, like Aristotle, he would rely not so much upon individualistic self-expression as upon a purposeful _imitation_ of those men in the past who had led useful and happy lives. III. FRANKLIN'S LITERARY THEORY AND PRACTICE[i-121] Uniting the "wit of Voltaire with the simplicity of Rousseau," Franklin achieved a style "only surpassed by the unimprovable Hobbes of Malmesbury, the paragon of perspicuity." Characterized by simplicity, order, and a trenchant pointedness, his prose style was "a principal means" of his "advancement."[i-122] He was "extreamly ambitious ... to be a tolerable English writer." In the _Autobiography_ he recalls that he read books in "polemic divinity," Plutarch's _Lives_ (probably Dryden's translation), _Pilgrims Progress_, Defoe's _Essays upon Several Projects_, Mather's _Essays to do Good_, Xenophon's _Memorabilia_,[i-123] the _Spectator_ papers, and the writings of Shaftesbury and Collins. Born in Boston, he knew the Bible,[i-124] characterized by the apostle of Augustan correctness, Jonathan Swift, as possessing "that simplicity, which is one of the greatest perfections in any language." If Franklin did not achieve its "sublime eloquence," he approximated at intervals its directness and simplicity. In reading Defoe's _Essays_ he learned that Queen Anne's England urged that writers be "as concise as possible" and avoid all "superfluous crowding in of insignificant words, more than are needful to express the thing intended." (It is possible that Defoe's efforts "to polish and refine the English tongue," to avoid "all irregular additions that ignorance and affectation have introduced," influenced Franklin in favor of "correctness" and against provincialisms.) Defoe's "explicit, easy, free, and very plain" rhetoric is Franklin's.