Fill Up

I mentioned in my last post that I'd be letting other people write this blog for a little while. I came across this gem in the library the other day. Fill Up.

In a letter written to Anne Barrett on August 30, 1964, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote of his good friend and colleague, C.S. Lewis:

He was generous-minded, on guard against all prejudices, though a few were too deep-rooted in his native background to be observed by him. That his literary opinions were ever dictated by envy (as in the case of T.S. Eliot) is a grotesque calumny. After all it is possible to dislike Eliot with some intensity even if one has no aspirations to poetic laurels oneself.

Well of course I could say more, but I must draw the line. Still I wish it could be forbidden that after a great man is dead, little men should scribble over him, who have not and must know they have not sufficient knowledge of his life and character to give them any key to the truth. Lewis was not "cut to the quick" by his defeat in the election to the professorship of poetry: he knew quite well the cause. I remember that we had assembled soon after in our accustomed tavern and found C.S.L. sitting there, looking (and since he was no actor at all probably feeling) much at ease. "Fill up!" he said, "and stop looking so glum. The only distressing thing about this affair is that my friends seem to be upset."

Two things.

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien drinkin' in a pub together. Awesome.

Tolkien referring to Lewis saying, "little men should not scribble over a great man." Wow.