In some other stories, as in the _Legend of Good Women_, and the tale of Virginia, he is content with pathos, stopping short of vivid drama. In the _Knight's Tale_ he seems to have deliberately chosen a compromise between the pathetic mood of pure romance and a fuller dramatic method; he felt, apparently, that while the contrast between the two rivals admitted of drama, the position of the lady Emily in the story was such as to prevent a full dramatic rendering of all the characters. The plot required that the lady Emily should be left without much share of her own in the action. The short and uncompleted poem of _Anelida_ gains in significance and comes into its right place in Chaucer's works, when it is compared with such examples of the older school as the _Chastelaine de Vergi_. It is Chaucer's essay in that delicate abstract fashion of story which formed one of the chief accomplishments of the French Romantic School. It is his acknowledgment of his debt to the artists of sensibility, the older French authors, "that can make of sentiment," and it proves, like all his writings, how quick he was to save all he could from the teaching of his forerunners, for the profit of "that fair style that has brought him honour." To treat a simple problem, or "case," of right and wrong in love, was a favourite task of medieval courtly poetry, narrative and lyric. Chaucer in his _Anelida_ takes up this old theme again, treating it in a form between narrative and lyric, with the pure abstract melody that gives the mood of the actors apart from any dramatic individuality. He is one of the Extractors of Quintessence, and his _Anelida_ is the formal spirit, impalpable yet definite, of the medieval courtly romance.