On 15 December 1969 he wrote to Christopher:
I had once a considerable experience of what are/were probably England’s most (at least apparently) dullest and stodgiest students: Yorkshire’s young men and women of sub-public school class and home backgrounds bookless and cultureless. That does not, however, necessarily indicate the actual innate mental capacity – largely unawakened – of any given individual. A surprisingly large proportion proved ‘educable’: for which a primary qualification is the willingness to do some work (to learn) (at any level of intelligence). Teaching is a most exhausting task. But I would rather spend myself on removing the ‘dull’ from ‘stodges’ – providing some products of β to β + quality that retain some sanity – a hopeful soil from which another generation with some higher intelligence could arise. Rather – rather than waste effort on those of (apparently at any rate) higher intelligence that have been corrupted and disintegrated by school, and the ‘climate’ of our present days. Teaching an organized subject is simply not the instrument for their rehabilitation – if anything is. [Letters, pp. 403–4]
In an article by Penny Radford shortly after Tolkien’s death, his colleague Nevill Coghill remembered him as ‘always the most accessible of men’ who ‘gave unstinted help to all who asked for it. I have known him plan a set of lectures for another don who was a beginner’ (‘Professor Tolkien Leaves an Unpublished Book’, The Times (London), 3 September 1973, p. 1).
The Oxford English School. Essay, published in the Oxford Magazine for 29 May 1930, pp. 778–80, 782, one of a series by a variety of authors concerned with different schools at the University of *Oxford. In this Tolkien took the opportunity to examine the failings of the English syllabus as it stood at the time (see *Oxford English School), and to suggest improvements. His comments were ‘purely personal’, and if one part of the English School receives more notice, it is because it was Tolkien’s
principal concern, not because I regard it as the most important – though I do not measure importance by counting heads in final examinations. The length of the comment may be excused by those who reflect that the position of an English School in an English-speaking University is peculiar, and presents special problems too seldom considered ….
‘English’ plainly belongs by nature to a group of schools whose primary concern is with ‘books,’ written in one of the literary languages of Europe, ancient, medieval or modern, and with that language itself. Yet its ‘books’ are not in a foreign tongue, the language is the vernacular – although it may be held that for all the related schools the fact that the language studied is precisely not English is of fundamental importance.
The divergence between the two ‘sides’ of the English School, its ‘sub-schools,’ may be regarded as the result of different attempts at solving the special problem of an English English School. [p. 778]
He notes that the two sides are generally dubbed, not entirely accurately, as ‘language’ and ‘literature’, the latter more popular being preferred by more than ninety per cent of the English students. He proceeds to criticize the current regulations of the School, which mean that the ‘literature’ student who wishes to gain a knowledge of Old and Middle English (a ‘language’ subject) cannot do so in depth, while a ‘language’ student is ‘scarcely required to study any “books” in the modern period.’ ‘No one person’, therefore, ‘can be expected to deal adequately with both of the “sub-schools”’ (pp. 778–9).
Tolkien surmises that the ‘literature’ curriculum ‘is felt unsatisfactory by all’ because it allows for only an elementary linguistic component; though ‘it is probable that some would prefer its equivalent (e.g., “Latin and Greek without tears”) rather than its re-ordering and revival.’ Personally he favours
curtailing the thousand years at the modern end, jettisoning certainly the nineteenth century (unless parts of it could appear as an ‘additional subject’); and the substitution of a scholarly study of worthy Anglo-Saxon and Middle English texts, with a paper of unseen translation, for the extracts and the meagre ‘philology.’ If real philology is required it should deal with the periods also studied as literature, and be examined in the same connection; otherwise it is valueless. [p. 779]
In contrast, he praises the ‘language’ curriculum and extols the importance of a study of Old English, Middle English, and Old Icelandic (Old Norse): Philology ‘is essential to the critical apparatus of student and scholar’ and ‘language is more important than any of its special functions, such as literature. Its study is profound and fundamental’ (p. 780). Old Icelandic, Tolkien believes, should ‘be prescribed for all and made more central.’ Texts in the three languages should be increased, with definite books prescribed. ‘The specialised history, especially the phonetic history, of modern English should disappear as a compulsion from this branch of the School.’ Chaucer should be recovered as a mediaeval author, ‘and part of his works become once more the subject of detailed and scholarly study. The pretence that no “English” curriculum is humane which does not include Shakespeare must naturally be abandoned, since that author lies quite outside the purview of such a course’ (p. 782).
Related to the theme of this essay is Tolkien’s poem Lit’ and Lang’, written while he was at *Leeds and later published in *Songs for the Philologists. In this there are ‘two little groups, / Called Lit’ and Lang’’, i.e. the Literature and Language sides of an English school curriculum. Lit’ does not like philology and ‘was lazy till she died, / Of homophemes’ (words of different meaning or spelling which require the same position of the lips – that is, Lit’ was too lazy to look at the words themselves). When doctors cut up the corpse of Lit’ ‘they couldn’t find the brain’. Lang’ does not mourn her death.
Oxford Letter. Letter apparently written at the editor’s request, published as by ‘Oxon’ in the King Edward’s School Chronicle n.s. 28, no. 202 (December 1913), pp. 80–1. Tolkien’s authorship is revealed in his papers. The letter contains news of Old Edwardians (former pupils at *King Edward’s School, Birmingham) now at the University of *Oxford. *G.B. Smith is prominently mentioned.
Oxford Poetry 1915. Third in a series of annual volumes of verse written by undergraduates or graduates of *Oxford (the first covered 1910–13), published December 1915 in Oxford by B.H. Blackwell (*Publishers). See further, Descriptive Bibliography B1.
The 1915 volume, edited by Gerald Crow and *T.W. Earp, includes Tolkien’s poem *Goblin Feet. Altogether the volume contains fifty-two poems by twenty-five authors. Among the latter, in addition to Tolkien, are several poets who had or were later to have personal connections: T.W. Earp, Naomi M. Haldane (*Naomi Mitchison), *Leonard Rice-Oxley, *G.B. Smith, and *H.T. Wade-Gery. Other contributors include Aldous Huxley; Dorothy L. Sayers; and *H.R. Freston, soon to die in the Somme, about whose poems Tolkien delivered a paper to an Oxford student society in May 1915.
The Palantíri. Various writings concerning the palantíri, made by Tolkien while revising *The Lord of the Rings for its second edition, formed by *Christopher Tolkien into a continuous essay and published with notes in *Unfinished Tales (1980), pp. 403–15.
The Palantíri expands upon the history and nature of the seeing-stones, how they were used and what could be seen in them, why they were forgotten in the latter part of the Third Age, what was known to the White Council and what