I have no help to send, therefore I must go myself.

Middle-earth is our world. I have (of course) placed the action in a purely imaginary (though not wholly impossible) period of antiquity, in which the shape of the continental masses was different.

Oh! That was poetry!" said Pippin. "Do you really mean to start before the break of day?

The dwarves of course are quite obviously, couldn't you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? Their words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic. Hobbits are just rustic English people, made small in size because it reflects (in general) the small reach of their imagination - not the small reach of their courage or latent power.

These folk are hewers of trees and hunters of beasts; therefore we are their unfriends, and if they will not depart we shall afflict them in all ways that we can." -- The Silmarllion, JRR Tolkien

For still there are so many things that I have never seen: in every wood in every spring there is a different green.

The quiet was so deep that their feet seemed to thump along while all the trees leaned over them and listened.