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Although Tompkins and Atkins are not bad representations of Oxford faculty today, in terms of regard for Tolkien's legacy. While there are a handful who value his fiction, the Consensus Position is that Tolkien frittered away what should have been a brilliant career on his fairy nonsense, instead of publishing proper papers and books on English philology: the promise of his young adulthood squandered.
(NB: why those names? Derived from Tommy Atkins? Some drollery regarding the diminutive suffix?)
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It's perhaps noteworthy that Tolkien wrote Leaf in 1943- in other words when The Lord of the Rings had been stalled for at least a year and he at the time didn't see it getting on. Both the LR and his Legendarium can vbe seen as the Tree, and so it's interesting how slighting the author's voice is in regard to the Tree's quality and importance. Not really very good, but unusual and thus not entirely devoid of interest. And then Niggle's fantasy, of someone coming in and giving him a public pension so he wouldn't have to worry about anything but painting- how the overworked wartime Professor must have longed for that!
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.
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