Esolen, Tolkien and Niggle

If you have regularly enjoyed the essays and comments of Anthony Esolen in Touchstone Magazine as I have, you will want to borrow (feel free) or buy his new book: Ironies of Faith: The Laughter at the Heart of Christian Literature. The chapter "Time and the Neighbor: J. R. R. Tolkien's 'Leaf, by Niggle'" is worth the price of the book.
"Niggle was a painter. Not a very successful one, partly because he had many other things to do" Ironically, Niggle does most of these other things fairly well, illustrating our sad and laughable inability to recognize what we are really made for.
Niggle's painting reflects his personality. He is like most of us: his "goodness" is rather the absence of a remarkable vice than the vigor of a remarkable virtue. He is not strong enough to refuse his neighbors when they ask him to do what he really is good at (mending things, for example).
And so on.