Answer:
The correct answer is B) the quality or state of being unassertive, meekness.
Step-by-step explanation:
The excerpt from the passage - The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin refers. Here the writer indicates that he had learned a thing or two on his quest to better his grip of English grammar.
According to him, he had also mastered the use of rhetoric and logic and with a facade of a humble enquirer and doubter and became proficient in winning arguments and concession even from people who were masters at their own subject areas or expertise.
The trick there was to appear to not know, unchallenging and almost ignorant, a strategy which lowered the "defensive" walls of the respondents. It is in this light that the writer uses the word diffidence.
Towards the end of the excerpt, he quotes the 8th line of Alexander Pope's writ "An Essay on Criticism: Part 3" where it former in advising on how to approach criticism advises as follows:
"And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence"
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