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As I was reading through the introduction to the Book of Lost Tales Part I, at one point Christopher Tolkien says that his father was reluctant to even introduce the Silm to his readers:
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"I am doubtful myself about the undertaking [to write the Silmarillion.]. Part of the attraction of the L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in the sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed." J.R.R. Tolkien, Letters p. 333
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Whoa, whoa, whoa there, Nellie! Check for context!
Christopher Tolkien in the BLT I Foreword was quoting Tom Shippey, who was in turn quoting the JRRT letter: and CRT was in fact *criticising*
Shippey for interpolating the words "to write The Silmarillion." JRRT never wrote them- and in any case, Shippey was under the very false impression that Tolkien hadn't, in fact, already written The Silmarillion*, much of it many times over.
In fact in the Second and Third Editions of The Road to Middle-earth Shippey has retracted his interpolation.
EDIT 11/7: In the 2004 edition of RME, Shippey writes, "I should have looked back at the antecedent sentences of the letter, and realised that what was meant was something more like 'I am doubtful myself about the undertaking [to make
The Silmarillion consistent both internally and with the now-published
Lord of the Rings, and above all to give it "some progressive shape."]'"
*By 1963 all the texts which wound up in the published Silmarillion had already been done, except for the very late revisions to 'Of Maeglin.' Tolkien wrote very, very little First Age narrative after his retirement in 1959; and of course in all its essentials the book pre-dated The Lord of the Rings. Shippey got this backwards in '82, before HoME was available.