It can be argued that Cain, which drew on the recent discovery of "the bones of enormous & unknown animals" - one of which, in 1824 (the year of Byron's death), would formally be named 'Megalosaurus'' - is the first work of literature to feature dinosaurs.
Lucifer takes Cain into Hades, & shows him the ghosts of vanished worlds.
Cain: ’Tis like another world; a liquid sun –
And those inordinate creatures sporting o’er
Its shining surface?
Lucifer: Are its inhabitants,
The past Leviathans.
"What are these mighty phantoms which I see
Floating around me? – They wear not the form
Of the Intelligences I have seen
Round our regretted and unentered Eden."
Cain asks this question before either Megalosaurus or Iguanodon had been formally named...
He goes on to wonder what future ages will make of the bones of George IV!
The greatest illustration of a poem by a Romantic poet EVER #Cain
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