Carthage, where they see a temple of Juno under construction.nThe sculptural ornaments of the temple turn out to be scenesnfrom the Trojan War. “What place,” Aeneas asks his friend,n”what part of the world is not full of our suffering? Behold Priam.nHere there are the rewards due his merit. The thingsnmen do draw tears, and touch the mind with thoughts ofndeath.”nArt—in this case sculpture—has caught the moral drama ofnthe war and touched the hearts of the alien Phoenicians whonare settling Carthage, and when Aeneas meets the queen ofnthe city, she tells him that her own suffering has made hernmore receptive to the Trojans’ plight: “Acquainted with grief,nI am learning how to help the unfortunate.” What allows hernto learn this trick of connecting her own suffering with that ofnthe Trojans? Art. Queen Dido, from her own experience andnfrom seeing and hearing the tale of Troy, has discovered ancommon humanity that unites Greeks, Trojans, and Phoenicians.nIn considering these passages of Homer and Vergil, we comenclose to the heart of the ancient view of literature. In the PoeticsnAristotle was only summing up and sharpening the edgenof commonplace Creek opinions. All art is mimesis, that is,nmimicry or impersonation. “Mimicry grows up in human beingsnfrom their childhood, and man differs from other beastsnin this, that he is the most imitative of creatures, and throughnmimicry he learns his first lessons; there is also the fact that everyonentakes pleasure in [regarding] imitations. . . . The verynthings that we view with pain [when they really happen], thenimages of these things, when accurately represented, we takenpleasure in watching.” Aristotle’s reason for the pleasure ofnsecondhand pain is that men by nature desire to learn and thatnwe take pleasure in recognizing the original of a likeness.nThere is, perhaps, a bit more to it than simple recognition.nAfter the great storm, when Aeneas’ fortunes are at their lowestnebb, he tells his comrades: “Perhaps some day we shall enjoynrecollecting even this.” Memory is the most basic of thenarts; Mnemosyne is the mother of the Muses, in part becausenthe epic poets claimed to be representing the events of historynas they really happened.nThe pleasure of poetry lies in the recollection and recreationnof past experiences, including the experiences of the dead. Althoughnthey certainly claimed to be accurate, the poets havenalways lied, as Plato and Nietzsche complained. But we all lienin our memories, remembering the days of our youth as morengolden (or blacker) than they were, recollecting the impossiblenbeauty of our first loves, or even recounting the stories ofnMallarmean fish that are larger and lovelier for getting away.nEvery day of our lives we “lend artistic verisimilitude to a baldnand otherwise unconvincing narrative,” and he is an artist whoncan “summon up a remembrance of things past.”nMost of us do not get much beyond memory and rely uponnthe stories of novelists, poets, and filmmakers as thenscenarios of our own moral narratives. Like the projectionistnin Keaton’s Sherlock, ]r. who falls asleep watching the film, wenstep into the picture and become a participant in the action.nWhen Robert Coles began studying the moral life of poornSouthern children, he was at first annoyed by the omnipresencenof television in their homes and by the children’s habitnof referring to movies instead of to their own lives: “I wantednto hear more about what was actually happening to the child.nMy training had taught that a cartoon or a movie essentiallyn14/CHRONICLESnnnunderlined or amplified an existing psychological reality. …”nAs his work progressed, Coles began to realize the value ofnfilms as vehicles for expressing and exploring the moral beliefsnof the children and adults he was interviewing. After discussingna young segregationist’s views in connection with ThenMan Who Shot Liberty Valance, Coles concluded:nPerhaps the word imagination is . . . the one requirednto do some justice to us moviegoers: moral imaginationnas it is lent energy by that inert celluloid goingnround and round for a hundred minutes or so. . . . thennthe mind recovers the remembered words, the scenesnthat engage with a person’s own scene, his or her lifesituation.nNone of the films used by Coles were overt propaganda; indeed,nnothing so spoils a work of fiction as the author’s sermonizingnor, worse, his attempt to be his own literary criticnand interpret the meaning of his story. The intellectual novelist,nif he is any good, must be constantly on guard against thentemptation to explain away his story.nIntellectuals rarely do make good novelists, because the processnof creating a story is not primarily an intellectual task.nAnthony Trollope was a very unlikely candidate for literary eminence.nHe was grubby and untidy as a child, a poor studentnwho only occasionally ascended to the heights of mediocrity.nAs a young employee of the British postal system, he was neithernpunctual nor disciplined, and like Johnny Eames, the heronof The Small House at Allington, it took him longer than mostn”hobbledehoys” to find himself.nAs for his intellect, it was hardly any better than that of JohnnEames who could never manage to read Creek. His opinionsnwere, for the most part, the utterly conventional views of anmoderately liberal defender of the imperial status quo, andnsince he could not argue he generally attempted to win hisnpoint by outshouting his opponents. And yet, and yet, therenis no novelist who gives us a deeper or wiser glimpse of humannnature in all its varieties.nHow can this be? How can a completely ordinary man, onenis tempted to say dullard, succeed in a genre where muchnbrighter men (e.g., Edmund Wilson and Henry Adams andnGeorge Santayana) made fools of themselves? The explanationnlies in Trollope’s lifelong habit of reverie. Like many hobbledehoys,nyoung Anthony found the world of his imaginationnmore comfortable than the harsh jungle of WinchesternCollege:nI was always going about with some castle in the airnfirmly built in my own mind. . . . For weeks, fornmonths . . . from year to year, I would carry on thensame tale. I learned in this way to maintain an interestnin a fictitious story, to dwell on a work created by mynown imagination, and to live in a world altogether outsidenthe world of my own material life.nIn Trollope’s view, the effect of literature upon the readernis its appeal to the imagination. To succeed in making hisnreaders “so intimately acquainted with his characters that thencreations of his brain should be to them speaking, moving, livingncreatures,” the novelist must “know those fictitious personagesnhimself.” His characters must “be with him as he liesndown to sleep, and as he wakes from his dreams. He mustn