I want to be an early to mid-20th century academic

"[Tolkien's lecture, "Beowulf: The Mosters and the Critics"] is the work of a very intelligent, well-read man and I don't think we get many insights into his brilliance quite as accessible as this one, where he is talking about his chosen field of study to a gathering of some of the finest minds in the same field. It is revelatory to see how Tolkien would flip between languages with apparent spontaneity, and presumably his audience would be expected to follow him as he dropped in a word of Greek here, a bit of Latin there, some German, a bit of Middle English banter and of course a lot of Old English, since this is the language Beowulf was written in, some time between the 7th and 10th century A.D." - Tehanu, The People's Guide to J.R.R. Tolkien

I so wish I lived in a society with people who thought like this.