In September 1881 Rossetti went for a trip in the lake district of Cumberland accompanied by Mr. Hall Caine, but after a month his health grew worse and he returned in haste to London. A few days later he became so ill that he required very careful nursing. After a partial recovery from this illness he was once more interrupted in his work by an attack of nervous paralysis, which seized him suddenly. This last attack was due to the chloral he had been in the habit of taking for so long and it was then strictly forbidden. The habit of so many years was not to be broken without much discomfort and suffering, but he gradually got better. As soon as he was well enough he was taken to Birchington-on-Sea in February 1882, there he managed to work a little, but was soon attacked by an old disorder, and in his weakened state of health he could not throw it off. He grew weaker and worse. Death came with the 10th of April 1882, and the painter poet is buried in the little churchyard of Birchington. In the last days of his life, when he could paint no more, he made an attempt to finish the story of "St. Agnes of Intercession" which was begun for the "Germ," he also completed the ballad of "Jan Van Hunks," and wrote a couple of sonnets for his drawing called the "Question." Most of the critics who have written on Rossetti deplore the fact that he did not learn to paint, but to artists one of the greatest charms of his pictures (especially the early ones) is the unexpectedness of their composition. We owe that charm in a great measure to the fact that happily he had not been spoiled by the sophisticated teaching of Academic Schools, but had kept the bloom of his poetical inspiration. We must thank the instinct of the young man, which made him avoid a teaching which is bound to be fatal to both realism and romanticism. It may be that he himself deplored the lack of training at certain moments of discouragement in his life, but the kind of training available at the time of his début would not have added much to his achievement. He managed to say what he had to say, and in many cases to say it well. He saved himself the loss of time necessary to forget certain of the artistic préjugés then in vogue, they would have been very much in his way, even if he had quite succeeded in getting rid of them. The rather amateurish side to Rossetti's art is vastly compensated for by the precious qualities he has been able to preserve. It is unfortunate that, through his refusal to exhibit, the public has been acquainted first with his later work, which shows the decline of his faculties caused by his ill health. Neither the fresh creations of his early work nor the gorgeous pieces of his middle period are as well known as they deserve to be.