[Footnote 107: Emanuel Chrysoloras, and his colleagues, are
accused of ignorance, envy, or avarice, (Sylloge, &c., tom.
ii. p. 235.) The modern Greeks pronounce it as a V
consonant, and confound three vowels, and several
diphthongs. Such was the vulgar pronunciation which the
stern Gardiner maintained by penal statutes in the
university of Cambridge: but the monosyllable represented to
an Attic ear the bleating of sheep, and a bellwether is
better evidence than a bishop or a chancellor. The
treatises of those scholars, particularly Erasmus, who
asserted a more classical pronunciation, are collected in
the Sylloge of Havercamp, (2 vols. in octavo, Lugd. Bat.
1736, 1740:) but it is difficult to paint sounds by words:
and in their reference to modern use, they can be understood
only by their respective countrymen. We may observe, that
our peculiar pronunciation of the O, th, is approved by
Erasmus, (tom. ii. p. 130.)]