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Originally Posted by Helen
It began to "fit" when Elrond entered the tale, and the swords were revealed as being from Gondolin. He couldn't keep the Sil out of the Hobbit even then-- any more than he could keep it out of Roverandom.
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But the point is he was making use of the existing mythology as background - as in Roverrandom - not writing a new story within the Legendarium.
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And if he had suceeded in completely separating TH from the Sil, then where would his Hobbit Sequel have ended up? LOTR began as a simple Hobbit sequel-- and got "drawn up".
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I don't think his problem was 'completely separating TH from the Sil'. Once he had allowed LotR to become part of The Sil TH had to be made to work & integrated as well as possible. Having said that (& Eru forbid it should ever happen!) if TH was to disappear completely there would be nothing
of import to the Legendarium lost by that. We have enough of Bilbo's story in LotR for that story to make sense.
The inconsistency of TH with the rest of the Legendarium nagged at him for a long time. It didn't just produce the alterations to TH itself but The Quest of Erebor as well.