Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.

Thomas Middleton

Blind as one that hath been found drunk a seven-night.

Blessed eyes, like a pair of suns,
Shine in the sphere of smiling.

Fearless as a drunkard.

Grosse as a hog.

Limber as eelskins.

Lurk, like a snake under the innocent shade
Of a spread summer-leaf.

Base lust,
With all her powders, paintings, and best pride,
Is but a fair house built by a ditch side.

Prosper as gardener’s crops do in the rottenest ground.

Pure as sanctity’s best shrine.

Round as a tun.

Salute as ceremoniously as lawyers when they meet after a long vacation.

True as a barber’s news on Saturday night.

Honest wedlock,Is like a banqueting house built in a garden,On which the spring’s chaste flowers take delightTo cast their modest odours.

I must seem like a hanging moon, a little waterish for a while.

Wriggle in and out like an eel in a sandbag.

Writs like wild-fowl, fly abroad,
And then return o’er cities, towns, and hills,
With clients, like dried straws, between their bills.