16 JULY 1983, Page 20

Mr Clive James

As published in the Spectator of 11 June, 1983, Be! Mooney's review of the book `Mr George Eliot' by David Williams contained an apparently disparaging reference to Mr Clive James. This resulted from an ab- breviation of the following passage: 'No specialist, he elevated dilettanteism into a virtue. All the jibes at Lewes — that he was pushy, conceited, vulgar, over-energetic, and with an eye for the main chance — make him a welcome and refreshing relief from such dour Victorian valetudinarians as Carlyle and Herbert Spencer. Lively, a polymath, Lewes reads like an early incar- nation of Clive James.' We regret that the sense of this passage was changed.