Text fragment: from The Fellowship of the Ring to The Discarded Image

I don't seem to have a post on either LOTR or TDI¹, which surprises me. But here's a fragment from the Fellowship of the Ring:

They drew long and elaborate family trees with innumerable branches. In dealing with Hobbits it is important to remember who is related to whom, and in what degree. It would be impossible in this book to set out a family tree that included even the more important members of the more important families at the time which these tales tell of The genealogical trees at the end of the Red Book of Westmarch are a small book in themselves, and all but Hobbits would find them exceedingly dull. Hobbits delighted in such things, if they were accurate: they liked to have books filled with things that they already knew, set out fair and square with no contradictions. 

The connection may not be clear: it is that Lewis says that the mediaevals liked their texts padded with stuff that they knew.

Perhaps relatedly, I'm finding novelty less interesting as time goes by; instead, stuff that is familiar but half forgotten plays well. To my shame, that is particularly true of the harder stuff: I've browsed E's "Real Analysis" year-1 textbook, and enjoyed it, without working through the proofs in detail, because I know them in outline.

Notes

1. I lie. I have The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, by C. S. Lewis.