I guess there are a lot of answers to this but here comes what I've gathered. Tolkien loved heroic fantasy literature and myth but was dismayed that England didn't have a mythology to call it's own and so wanted to create one. Also, as a linguist, he must have found the desire to create his own languages overwhelming and language and history are intricately intertwined. You can't study a language with considering the history of the people that spoke that language.
Is that close?
H.C.
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"Stir not the bitterness in the cup that I mixed myself. Have I not tasted it now many nights upon my tongue, foreboding that worse yet lay in the dregs."
-Denethor
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