[Aiwendil]

I am rather fond of this chapter - largely because, I suppose, I am rather fond of Smaug. After eleven chapters leading up to a confrontation of some kind with the dragon, it would be easy for his eventual introduction to be a disappointment. It is not. On the contrary, the powerful and somewhat "high-mythological" character of Smaug makes quite an impression after the many "lower", more comic, adventures of Bilbo and the Dwarves.

But Smaug is no mere villain. He is a dragon. And Tolkien was well aware that dragons are special. In "On Fairy Stories" he says:

I never imagined that the dragon was of the same order as the horse. And that was not solely because I saw horses daily, but never even the footprint of a worm. The dragon had the trade-mark Of Fairie written upon him.

In "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics":

A dragon is no idle fancy. Whatever may be his origins, in fact or invention, the dragon in legend is a potent creation of men's imagination, richer in significance than his barrow is in gold.

And he further notes:

. . . dragons, real dragons, essential both to the machinery and the ideas of a poem or tale, are actually rare

I think that this is a very perceptive point. Dragons are not appropriate for every tale, and there are actually rather few in western literature - there is the dragon in "Beowulf" of course; and there is Fafnir. But these are the only two really important dragons from Germanic myth.

So Tolkien understood what dragons are about. They are not just powerful villains; they are the embodiment of evil, cunning, greed, and, of course, Faerie.

Look at the way Smaug speaks:

Well, thief! I smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to spare!

His sentences are terse and to the point; his speech in fact seems to have a very Anglo-Saxon quality to me.

We get a few more details about dragons and about Smaug:

This [speaking in riddles] is the way to talk to dragons, if you don't want to reveal your proper name (which is wise), and don't want to infuriate them by a flat refusal (which is also very wise) No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time trying to understand it.

This recalls, to a degree, the dialogue between Turin and Glaurung in the Silmarillion. There, of course, "proper names" are again an issue. Glaurung states that the Dragon-helm of Dor-Lomin will have to "await a master of another name" before its bearer deals him his doom; it finds that master of another name when Turin takes the name "Turambar".

Whenever Smaug's roving eye, seeking for him in the shadows, flashed across him, he trembled, and an unaccountable desire seized hold of him to rush out and reveal himself and tell all the truth to Smaug. In fact he was in grievous danger of coming under the dragon-spell.

Again, we have an element present (and important) in the story of Turin and Glaurung. Turin falls under the "dragon-spell" when he lifts his visor and looks Glaurung in the eye.

"I have always understood," said Bilbo in a frightened squeak, "that dragons were softer underneath, especially in the region of the - er - chest; but doubtless one so fortified has thought of that."

Though, of course, Bilbo's "information is antiquated", it is nonetheless a valid bit of dragon lore. For again the tale of Turin comes to mind - Turin slew Glaurung by waiting in a ravine for him and striking him in the underbelly as Glaurung crossed it.

My point here is that, despite the great disparity in tone between The Hobbit and The Silmarillion, Tolkien is completely consistent in his characterization of dragons. Glaurung was, of course, already in existence when Smaug was invented. By placing a dragon - and one very much like Glaurung - in this work, Tolkien is, in my opinion, lifting The Hobbit into another plane.