e final y twice sounded before a vowel,

Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song.

Again a few lines later,

That to the height of this great argument
I may assert Eternal Providence.

Ten lines farther we read of the Serpent

Stirr'd up with envy and revenge.

We have only an apparent elision of y a few lines later in his aspiring

To set himself in glory above his peers,

for the line would be ruined were the y to be omitted by a reader. The
extreme shortness of the two unaccented syllables, y and a, gives them
the quantity of one in the metre, and allows by the turn of voice a
suggestion of exuberance, heightening the force of the word glory. Three
lines lower Milton has no elision of the y before a vowel in the line,

Against the throne and monarchy of God.

Nor eight lines after that in the words day and night. There is elision
of y in the line,

That were an ignominy and shame beneath
This downfall.

But none a few lines lower down in

Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heaven.

When the y stands by itself, unaccented, immediately after an accented
syllable, and precedes a vowel that is part of another unaccented
syllable standing immediately before an accented one, Milton accepts the
consequence, and does not attempt to give it the force of a distinct
syllable. But Addison's vague notion that it was Milton's custom to cut
off the final y when it precedes a vowel, and that for the sake of being
uncommon, came of inaccurate observation. For the reasons just given,
the y of the word glory runs into the succeeding syllable, and most
assuredly is not cut off, when we read of

the excess
Of Glory obscured: as when the sun, new ris'n,
Looks through the horizontal misty air,

but the y in misty stands as a full syllable because the word air is
accented. So again in

Death as oft accused
Of tardy execution, since denounc'd
The day of his offence.

The y of tardy is a syllable because the vowel following it is
accented; the y also of day remains, because, although an unaccented
vowel follows, it is itself part of an accented syllable.]

* * * * *

No. 286. Monday, January 28, 1712. Steele.

Nomina Honesta praetenduntur vitiis.

Tacit.

York, Jan. 18, 1712.

Mr. Spectator,

I pretend not to inform a Gentleman of so just a Taste, whenever he
pleases to use