WINDFALL.

(Vol. vii., p. 285.)

W. W. is desirous of interpreting windfall, as necessarily from its origin denoting a gain. He is, perhaps, expecting a handsome bequest; I wish he may get it; but he may rely on it that the windfall of the bequest will be accompanied by the windfall of the "Succession Act." Let us hear what our great Doctor says; his first explanation is, "Fruit blown down from the tree."

W. W.'s little boys and girls would deem a windfall of unripe apples, at this time of the year, a good; they will make a pie for dinner. W. W. himself would call it an evil; the ripe crop is ruined.

But let us see how Johnson illustrates his explanation:

"Their boughs were too great for their stem, they became a windfall upon the sudden."—Bacon, Essay 29.

Webster copies this for his first explanation, as he does also our Dr's. second for his second; but as it is not his plan to illustrate by examples, he is saved from the eccentricity of his original.

If we refer to Bacon we shall be reminded of Johnson's warning, that by "hasty detruncation the general tendency of a sentence may be changed." The sentence here so hastily detruncated, stands thus in the Essay:

"The Spartans were a nice people in point of naturalisation, whereby while they kept their compasse, they stood firme. But when they did spread, and their boughes were becommen too great for their stemme, they became a windfall upon the suddaine. 'Potentia eorum subito corruit.'"

They, in Johnson's mutilated sentence, refers to the boughs; in Bacon, to the Spartans; so that, in

the first place, the Spartans are transformed into boughs, and, in the next place, the boughs into fruit. Detruncation, however, had nothing to do with this latter metamorphosis; and I am afraid this is not a solitary instance of lexicographical incongruity.

W. W. may assure himself that a windfall is "whatever falls by the wind, or with similar suddenness or unexpectedness, whether bringing good or ill."

And if he will take the trouble to refer to "The Case of Impeachment of Waste," quoted by Mr. Arrowsmith, Vol. vii., p. 375., he will find, only a few lines before that gentleman's quotation begins, a legal question at issue as to the right of property in windfalls.

Bloomsbury.