“Holla your name to the reverberate hills,
    And make the babbling gossip of the air
    Cry out, Olivia!”

and this of Cleopatra’s with the asp at her bosom,—­

“Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
That sucks the nurse asleep?”

Or, as an instance of both figures together, take the following from King Lear, iv. 3, where the Gentleman describes to Kent the behaviour of Cordelia on hearing of her father’s condition: 

                               “You have seen
    Sunshine and rain at once; her smiles and tears
    Were like:  a better way,—­those happy smilets
    That play’d on her ripe lip seem’d not to know
    What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence
    As pearls from diamonds dropp’d.”

Here we have two similes, in the first two and last clauses; and also two metaphors, severally conveyed in,—­“That play’d on her ripe lip,” and, “What guests were in her eyes.”  Perhaps I ought to add that a simile is sometimes merely suggested or implied; as in these lines from Wordsworth: 

    “What is glory?—­in the socket
    See how dying tapers fare! 
    What is pride?—­a whizzing rocket
    That would emulate a star.

    What is friendship?—­do not trust her,
    Nor the vows which she has made;
    Diamonds dart their brightest lustre
    From a palsy-shaken head.”

Thus much by way of analyzing the two figures, and illustrating the difference between them.  In all these instances may be seen, I think, how in a metaphor the intensity and fire of imagination, instead of placing the two parts side by side, melts them down into one homogeneous mass; which mass is both of them and neither of them at the same time; their respective properties being so interwoven and fused together, that those of each may be affirmed of the other.

I have said that Shakespeare uses the Simile in a way somewhat peculiar.  This may require some explication.—­Homer, Virgil, Dante, Spenser, Milton, and the great Italian poets of the sixteenth century, all deal largely in what may be styled full-drawn similes; that is, similes carefully elaborated through all their parts, these being knit together in a balanced and rounded whole.  Here is an instance of what I mean, from Paradise Lost, i.: 

                   “As when the potent rod
    Of Amram’s son, in Egypt’s evil day,
    Wav’d round the coast, up call’d a pitchy cloud
    Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
    That o’er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
    Like night, and darken’d all the land of Nile;
    So numberless where those bad angels seen
    Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell,
    ’Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires.”

This may be fitly taken as a model specimen of the thing; it is severely classical in style, and is well worthy of the great hand that made it.  Here is another, somewhat different in structure, and not easy to beat, from Wordsworth’s Miscellaneous Sonnets, Part ii.: