To German philosophy and literature Carlyle owed his critical method, by which he all but revolutionised criticism as understood by his Edinburgh and London contemporaries. Carlyle began his apprenticeship with the Edinburgh Reviewers, in whose hand criticism never lost its political bias. Apart from that, criticism up till the time of Carlyle was mainly statical. The critic was a kind of literary book-keeper who went upon the double-entry system. On one page were noted excellences, on the other defects, and when the two columns were _totalled_ the debtor and creditor side of the transaction was set forth. Where, as in the cases of Burns and Byron, genius was complicated with moral aberration, anything like a correct estimate was impossible. The result was that in Scotland criticism oscillated between the ethical severity of the pulpit and the daring laxity of free thought. As the Edinburgh Reviewers could not afford to set the clergy at defiance, they had to pay due respect to conventional tastes and standards. Carlyle faced the question from a different standpoint. He introduced into criticism the dynamic principle which he found in the Germans, particularly in Goethe. In contemplating a work of Art, the Germans talk much of the importance of seizing upon the creative spirit, what Hegel called the Idea. The thought of Goethe and Hegel, though differently expressed, resolves itself into the conception of a life principle which shapes materials into harmony with innate forms. In the sphere of life the determining factors are the inner vitalities, which, however, are susceptible to the environment. The critic who would realise his ideal does not go about with literary and ethical tape-lines: he seeks to understand the spirit which animated the author as shewn in his works and his life, and then studies the influence of his environment. That this is a correct description of Carlyle's critical method is evidenced by his own remarks in his essay on Burns. He says: 'If an individual is really of consequence enough to have his life and character recorded for public remembrance, we have always been of opinion that the public ought to be made acquainted with all the springs and relations of his character. How did the world and man's life from his particular position represent themselves to his mind? How did co-existing circumstances modify him from without: how did he modify these from within?'