Perchance to gladden the expectant eyes
Of far-off nations in a world remote.”[250]
The other was Pulci, who, in his “Morgante Maggiore,” sometimes called the last of the romances and the earliest of Italian epics, reveals an undiscovered world beyond the Pillars of Hercules:—
“Know that this theory is false; his bark
The daring mariner shall urge far o’er
The western wave, a smooth and level plain,
Albeit the earth is fashioned like a wheel.
Man was in ancient days of grosser mould,
And Hercules might blush to learn how far
Beyond the limits he had vainly set