His fame however rests on his version of Homer. The first portion appeared in 1598: 'Seven Bookes of the Iliade of Homer, Prince of Poets; Translated according to the Greeke in judgment of his best Commentaries.' In 1611 the Iliad complete appeared, and in 1615 the whole of the Odyssey; though he by no means reproduces Homer faithfully, he approaches nearest to the original in spirit and grandeur. It is a typical product of the English Renaissance, full of vigor and passion, but also of conceit and fancifulness. It lacks the simplicity and the serenity of the Greek, but has caught its nobleness and rapidity. As has been said, "It is what Homer might have written before he came to years of discretion." Yet with all its shortcomings it remains one of the classics of Elizabethan literature. Pope consulted it diligently, and has been accused of at times re-versifying this instead of the Greek. Coleridge said of it:-- "The Iliad is fine, but less equal in the translation [than the Odyssey], as well as less interesting in itself. What is stupidly said of Shakespeare is really true and appropriate of Chapman: 'Mighty faults counterpoised by mighty beauties.' ... It is as truly an original poem as the 'Faerie Queen';--it will give you small idea of Homer, though a far truer one than Pope's epigrams, or Cowper's cumbersome, most anti-Homeric Miltonisms. For Chapman writes and feels as a poet,--as Homer might have written had he lived in England in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In short, it is an exquisite poem in spite of its frequent and perverse quaintnesses and awkwardness, which are however amply repaid by almost unexampled sweetness and beauty of language, all over spirit and feeling." Keats's tribute, the sonnet 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer,' attests another poet's appreciation of the Elizabethan's paraphrase. Keats diligently explored this "new planet" that swam into his ken, and his own poetical diction is at times touched by the quaintness and fancifulness of the elder poet he admired. Lamb, that most sympathetic critic of the old dramatists, speaks of him as follows:--