Page:The Raven; with literary and historical commentary.djvu/116

 102 composition it was speedily imitated: one of the first English parodies was contributed by Robert Brough, to Cruikshank's Comic Almanack for 1853, and was republished in the Piccadilly Annual in 1870. The Vulture, as it is styled, is scarcely worthy of its parentage, but the two first stanzas may be cited as typical of the whole piece, which is descriptive of the depredations committed by a certain class of "sponges" on those people who are willing to put up with their ways:—