Mrrzy--

If you're right, and "pear-shaped" does show up as a literary metaphor somewhere, it's entirely possible that the writer picked up the phrase from a music or rhetoric teacher, ;-).

That's why I always take the assertion that Shakespeare "invented" certain turns of phrase (like to "humor" someone, or that something is "laughable"). He might indeed have been the first to right these phrases down in a literary work of art, but there is no proof that he didn't overhear them in the street.