The image of Novalis as romantic poet became enormously popular. When Novalis's biography by his long-time friend August Cölestin Just was published in 1815, Just was criticized for misrepresenting Novalis's poetic nature because he had written that Novalis was also a hard-working mine inspector and magistrate. Even the literary critic Thomas Carlyle, whose essay on Novalis played a major role in introducing him to the English-speaking world and took Novalis's philosophical relationship to Fichte and Kant seriously, emphasized Novalis as a mystic poet in the style of Dante. The author and theologian George MacDonald, who translated Novalis's "Hymns to the Night" in 1897 into English, also understood him as a poet of mystic desire.