23 MARCH 1962, Page 13

SIR, —The correspondents who (in your issue of March 16) unanimously

attack Dr. F. R. Leavis over his Richmond Lecture provide the interested student with a first-rate social document for the condition of our time. A condition described by Ortega y Gasset: 'in the intellectual life, which of its essence requires and presupposes qualifica- tion, one can note the progressive triumph of the pseudo-intellectual, unqualified, unqualifiable and, by their very mental texture, disqualified.'

Sir, I suggest that it is Dr. Leavis who is the truly qualified man.