unpretendingness

He is very angry with the admirers of Swift; De Foe and 'many hundreds' of others wrote something quite as good; it only wanted 'plain good sense, natural feeling, unpretendingness, some little scholarly practice in putting together the clockwork of sentences, and, above all, the advantage of an appropriate subject.'

Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) Leslie Stephen 1868

And what wonder should there be in this, when the main qualification for such a style was plain good sense, natural feeling, unpretendingness, some little scholarly practice in putting together the clockwork of sentences, so as to avoid mechanical awkwardness of construction, but above all the advantage of a _subject_, such in its nature as instinctively to reject ornament, lest it should draw off attention from itself?

Note Book of an English Opium-Eater Thomas De Quincey 1822

She began the renewal of their intercourse with very high spirits, herself -- the simple nature and unpretendingness of his address awakening only an unembarrassed pleasure at seeing him again -- but she soon began to suspect there was an exquisite refinement in this very simplicity, and to wonder "at the trick of it;" and, after the first day passed in his society, her heart beat when he spoke to her, as it did not use to beat when she was sitting to him for her picture, and listening to his passionate love-making.

Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) Nathaniel Parker Willis 1875