It has been always with me: the sensibility to linguistic pattern which affects me emotionally like colour or music; and the passionate love of growing things; and the deep response to legends (for lack of a better word) that have what I would call the North-western temper and temperature.
JRR Tolkien
The Letters of J.R.R. Tokien, Edited by Humphrey Carpenter from a letter to W.H. Auden Hardbound pp. 212