Father Maximilian Hell (Vol. iii., p. 167.).—A querist is in conscience bound to be a respondent; I therefore hasten to tell you that Dr. Watt (Biblioth. Britan. iv. Magnetism, animal) should have written Hell instead of Hehl. It was that eminent astronomer, Maximilian Hell, who supposed that magnets affected the human frame, and, at first, approved of Mesmer's views. The latter was at Vienna in 1774; and perhaps got some parts of his theory from Father Hell, of whom he was afterwards jealous, and therefore very abusive. The life of Hell in Dr. Aikin's General Biography is an unsatisfactory compilation drawn up by Mr. W. Johnston, to whom we are indebted for the current barbarism so-called. In that account there is not one word on Hell's Treatise on Artificial Magnets, Vienna, 1763; in which the germ of animal magnetism may probably be found.
Engastrimythus.
Meaning of "strained" as used by Shakspeare (Vol. iii., p. 185.).—The context of the passage quoted by L. S. explains the sense in which Shakspeare used the word "strain'd:"
"Portia. Then must the Jew be merciful.
Shylock. On what compulsion must I? tell me that.
Portia. The quality of mercy is not strain'd," &c.
that is, there is nothing forced, nothing of compulsion in the quality of mercy.
Johnson gives: "To strain, to force, to constrain."
Q. D.
L. S. will find his difficulty solved by Johnson's Dictionary (a work to which he himself refers), if he compares the following quotation with Portia's reply to Shylock:—