Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916. Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Lay asleep like green waves on the sea. 1 A beard like an artichoke, with dry shrivelled jaws. 2 Blushing like the perfumed morn. 3 Blush like my waistcoat. 4 Caught, like vipers, with a bit of red cloth. 5 Your character at present is like a person in a plethora, absolutely dying from too much health. 6 Dull as catalogues. 7 Envious as an old maid verging on the desperation of six and thirty. 8 ’Tis not that she paints so ill but, when she has finished her face, she joins so badly to her neck, that she looks like a mended statue, in which the connoisseur may see at once that the head is modern, though the trunk’s antique. 9 Headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile. 10 Secret as a coach-horse. 11 Shrinks like scorched parchment from the fiery ordeal of true criticism. 12 Smells of gunpowder like a soldier’s pouch. 13 Swollen like a bladder. 14 Like a clipp’d guinea, trembles in the scale. 15
