Not to take us far afield of our topic of
The Hobbit, but the info on Tolkien's sequel to
LOTR is here...
Tolkien gave us some hints about the Fourth Age that Christopher Tolkien brought to light in his volume
The Peoples of Middle-earth in the chapter
The New Shadow.
This tale begins in the days of Eldarion, son of Elessar of whom the histories have much to tell. One hundred and five years had passed since the fall of the Dark Tower, and the story of that time was little heeded now by most of the people of Gondor, though a few were still living who could remember the War of the Ring as a shadow upon their early childhood…
Tolkien goes on for about a half dozen pages telling us of old Borlas, son of Beregond (remember him? ) and the growing of a secret dark society. These few pages, as I am sure you all know, were all that Tolkien wrote of his sequel before his death. He finishes with…
The door under the porch was open; but the house behind was darkling. There seemed none of the accustomed sounds of the evening, only a soft silence, a dead silence. He entered, wondering a little. He called, but there was no answer. He halted in the narrow passage that ran through the house, and it seemed that he was wrapped in blackness: not a glimmer of twilight of the world outside remained there. Suddenly he smelt it, or so it seemed, though it came as if it were from within outwards to the sense: he smelt the old Evil and knew it for what it was.
The capital letter ‘E’ on Evil tells us, I believe where Tolkien was going to go with his sequel. Oh what kind of tale would it have been had he finished it!!??
