Bilbo and the Ring (Gollum's Preciousss)

[barrelrider110]

Welcome, Mark of Cenla
Elen sÃ*la lúmenn' omentielvo

I also like one of the very last lines of the book on a number of levels...

Gandalf: "You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!"

[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by barrelrider110

Welcome, Mark of Cenla
Elen sÃ*la lúmenn' omentielvo

I also like one of the very last lines of the book on a number of levels...

Gandalf: "You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!"

Compare that to an incident Tolkien recounted in Letter 328 to a young woman who wrote him in the summer of 1971.

A few years ago I was visited in Oxford by a man whose name I have forgotten... He had been much struck by the curious way in which many old pictures seemed to him to have been designed to illustrate The Lord of the Rings long before its time. … When it became obvious that, unless I was a liar, I had never seen the pictures before …, he fell silent. Suddenly he said, “Of course you don’t suppose, do you, that you wrote all that book yourself?�

Pure Gandalf! I was too well acquainted with G. to expose myself rashly, or to ask what he meant. I think I said: “No, I don’t suppose so any longer.� I have never since been able to suppose so. … But not one that should puff any one up who considers the imperfections of “chosen instruments�, and indeed what sometimes seems their lamentable unfitness for the purpose.