He [Richard Steele] was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.

Macaulay uses this epigrammatic description while discussing Sir Richard Steele (1672–1729), the essayist and co-founder (with Joseph Addison) of the periodical papers The Tatler and The Spectator. Steele’s life combined genuine literary talent and moral earnestness with conspicuous personal disorder—heavy drinking, debt, and a taste for fashionable dissipation. In Macaulay’s Whig-inflected literary history, Steele becomes a representative figure of early eighteenth‑century London: moving between coffeehouse wits, political circles, and the world of hard-living “rakes,” yet also among educated men and serious writers. The line captures Steele’s social doubleness and the way his reputation straddled respectable letters and libertine manners.

The sentence turns on a balanced paradox: Steele is “a rake among scholars” (more pleasure-seeking and impulsive than the learned men around him) and “a scholar among rakes” (more intelligent, reflective, and literary than his hard-drinking companions). Macaulay’s point is not merely that Steele led a mixed life, but that he never fully belonged to either camp; his identity is defined by contrast and in-betweenness. The formulation also hints at Steele’s moral complexity: his writing often promotes civility and virtue, yet his conduct repeatedly falls short. As criticism, it is witty but not wholly condemnatory—suggesting charm, adaptability, and a mind capable of rising above his milieu even when he shares its vices.