How could Mr. Bennet's character be described in Pride and Prejudice?

Mr. Bennet is presented as an incredibly humorous
character. It is he that acts as the mouthpiece for Austen's wit and sarcasm,
particularly directed and his "long-suffering" wife. In the first chapter he is
introduced as follows:

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Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts,
sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and and twenty
years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his
character.

However, although
Mr. Bennet is shown to genuinely love Jane and Lizzie, Lizzie and Austen herself are not
blind to his own limitations. We are told that he married because he was "captivated by
youth and beauty" and therefore married someone with a "weak understanding and illiberal
nature" that killed any affection early on in the marriage. Elizabeth, we are told, is
not so consumed by her love for her father that she ignores the way that he has been a
negative influence on her and her siblings:

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Elizabeth, however, had never been blind to the
impropriety of her father's behaviour as a husband. She had always seen it with pain;
but respecting his abilities, and grateful for his affectionate treatment of herself,
she endeavoured to forget what she could not overlook, and to banish from her thoughts
that continual breach of conjugal obligation and decorum which, in exposing his wife to
the contempt of her own children, was so highly
reprehensible.

In spite of
this, Mr. Bennet is desperate that his beloved Lizzie should not marry someone who is
unsuited for her character, as he did, and we can see this clearly when Lizzie tells her
father about her engagement to Mr. Darcy. In spite of his faults, he is an affectionate,
loving father, who is always amusing.