On the authors of dictionary entries....

[brooksmoses]

Or, "If that's not H. G. Fowler's writing, I'll be remarkably surprised":

simile, n. The introduction, esp. in poetry or poetical style, ostensibly for explanatory or illustrative purposes, but often in fact for ornament only, of an object or scene or action with which the one in hand is professedly compared & usu. connected by a comparative conjunction....

That's from the Oxford Concise Dictionary (1924), which was excerpted out of the O.E.D., so it's certainly one he could have written.