But the truth is that professional skill is knowledge tested and perfected by practical application, and therefore has a great intellectual value. Professional life is to private individuals what active warfare is to a military state. It brings to light every deficiency, and reveals our truest needs. And therefore it seems to me a matter for regret that you should pass your existence in irresponsible privacy, and not have your attainments tested by the exigencies of some professional career. The discipline which such a career affords, and which no private resolution can ever adequately replace, may be all that is wanting to your development. LETTER III. TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO WISHED TO DEVOTE HIMSELF TO LITERATURE AS A PROFESSION. Byron's vexation at the idea of poetry being considered a profession--Buffon could not bear to be called a naturalist--Cuvier would not be called a Hellenist--Faraday's life not professional--The intellectual life frequently protected by professions outside of it--Professional work ought to be plain business work--Michelet's account of the incubation of a book--Necessity for too great rapidity of production in professional literature--It does not pay to do your best--Journalism and magazine-writing--Illustration from a sister art--Privilege of an author to be allowed to write little. Do you remember how put out Byron was when some reviewer spoke of Wordsworth as being "at the head of the profession"? Byron's vexation was not entirely due to jealousy of Wordsworth, though that may have had something to do with it, nor was it due either to an aristocratic dislike of being in a "profession" himself, though this feeling may have had a certain influence; it was due to a proper sense of the dignity of the intellectual life. Buffon could not bear to be called a "naturalist," and Cuvier in the same way disliked the title of Hellenist, because it sounded professional: he said that though he knew more Greek than all the Academy he was not a Hellenist as Gail was, because he did not live by Greek.