AIR APPARENT

In correcting Jay McInerney and Richard Eder, Andrew Dungan (Letters, July 12), is quite certain that “Brightness Falls” from the hair, not from the air.

He is certainly right that we read the usual version of the line, “Brightness falls from the air,” in a modern, symbolist way that would have made little sense to Elizabethan readers. And I too was completely convinced by J.V. Cunningham’s argument.

But as it happens, his proof was not quite conclusive. Wesley Trimpi has published a long, detailed paper in which he shows that the line Nashe wrote is probably “Brightness falls from the air” and that it made perfectly good sense to Elizabethans in terms of contemporary theories of disease.

As with so many literary and historical puzzles, the case is still open.

ROBERT MEZEY

CLAREMONT