Melema, and Fred Vincy; but rarely is he ridiculed, and then ironically.
Of the bonny young Squire Donnithorne she draws the portrait as he himself would see it:[1]
"* * * candour was one of his favorite virtues; and how
can a man's candour be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few
failings to talk of? But he had an agreeable confidence that
his faults were all of a generous kind—impetuous, warm-blooded,
leonine; never crawling, crafty, reptilian. 'No! I'm
a devil of a fellow for getting myself into a hobble, but I always
take care the load shall fall on my own shoulders.' Unhappily
there is no inherent poetic justice in hobbles, and they will
sometimes obstinately refuse to inflict their worst consequences
on the prime offender, in spite of his loudly-expressed wish.
It was entirely owing to this deficiency in the scheme of things
that Arthur had ever brought any one into trouble besides himself."
Even when troublesome consequences threatened both
himself and others, he was buoyed up by "a sort of implicit
confidence in him that he was really such a good
fellow at bottom, Providence would not treat him
harshly."
Tito Melema also leaned heavily on the law of compensation:[2]
"It was not difficult for him to smile pleadingly on those
whom he had injured, and offer to do them much kindness:
and no quickness of intellect could tell him exactly the taste of
that honey on the lips of the injured."
