Laudator Temporis Acti

Tom Shippey, Roots and Branches. Selected Papers on Tolkien (Berne: Walking Tree Publishers, 2007), pp. 139-140:

I am sure that if Tolkien had been asked for a one-word description of himself, he would have said, 'I am a philologist,' which he might have qualified by saying, as he did on at least one recorded occasion, "I am a pure philologist" (Letters, 264). His aim throughout his professional life was to establish a successful philological curriculum in British universities, and in this he failed; he failed even to maintain the curriculum in the state it was in when he joined the profession — and I say this without derision, for exactly the same could be said about me, as I know very well; the end result is that I believe it is now very difficult, even almost impossible, to follow a course of study of the sort Tolkien would have approved anywhere in the world, especially the English-speaking world, and especially in England itself. When Galadriel says of herself and her husband Celeborn that, "throughout the ages we have fought the long defeat" (LotR, 348), there is a sense that Tolkien could have said the same of himself, and his professional predecessors and successors: we all fought the long defeat together.