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When Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, the ring was just a magic ring, a convenient device for making Bilbo invisible and helping him through his adventures. Only when JRRT chose to make it into The One Ring for LotR did its nature change - and that passage from The Hobbit had to be changed to make it fit. Rimbaud is right - they wouldn't have been the same ring.
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'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth.. .'
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