J.R.R. Tolkien discussion

Had to share this interesting article discussing Middle-earth origins: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014...

Chapter Six of J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, called Reunion, covers the same ground as the article from the Guardian. It tells of how J.R.R. Tolkien was moved by the following two lines from the Anglo-Saxon poem, Crist by Cynewulf:
Eala Earendel engla beorhtast
ofer middangeard monnum sended.

'Hail Earendel, brightest of angels/above the middle-earth sent unto men.'
After reading those words for the first time, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote:" I felt a curious thrill, as if something had stirred in me, half wakened from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English."
So it was the name Earendil which planted the seed in his mind, which led him not only to write his first poem about Earendil the mariner, but to begin what became The Silmarillion.