* * * * *
Here thou, great Anna, whom three Realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea."
Rape of the Lock, iii.
Here tay was evidently the pronunciation, as in Fuh-kien. The Rape of the Lock was published in 1711. In Gray's Trivia, published in 1720, we find tea rhyme to pay, in a passage needless to quote (ii. 296). Fifty years later there seems no room for doubt that the pronunciation had changed to that now in use, as is shown by Johnson's extemporised verses (c. 1770):
"I therefore pray thee, Renny, dear,
That thou wilt give to me
With cream and sugar soften'd well,
Another dish of tea"—and so on.
Johnsoniana, ed. Boswell, 1835, ix. 194.