It frequently happens that where the second line is sublime, the third, in which he [Lucan] meant to rise still higher, is perfect bombast.

The remark is attributed to “Longinus,” the ancient Greek critic traditionally associated with the treatise *On the Sublime* (*Peri Hypsous*), probably composed in the 1st century CE (its authorship is disputed in modern scholarship). In the work, the author surveys how writers achieve “the sublime” in style and thought, and he also warns against common failures that mimic grandeur—especially inflated diction and overreaching. Lucan (the Roman poet of the *Pharsalia*) is discussed as an example of a poet capable of genuine elevation who nonetheless sometimes strains for ever-greater height, tipping from true sublimity into rhetorical excess. The comment belongs to this broader critical lesson about the fine line between greatness and bombast.

The sentence draws a sharp distinction between authentic sublimity and mere loudness. Longinus suggests that an artist may hit a genuinely elevated note (“the second line is sublime”) yet, in trying to surpass that success immediately, overextend and produce “perfect bombast”—language that is swollen, showy, and empty of real power. The point is not simply to mock Lucan but to diagnose a recurring artistic temptation: escalation for its own sake. Sublimity, in this critical tradition, depends on proportion, necessity, and inner force; when the writer consciously “means to rise still higher,” the effort can become visible and self-defeating, turning grandeur into parody.