A man of common sense

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850).

Cheerful, kindhearted, gloriously eccentric (he carries around an enormous kite on which he is writing, or attempting to write, a “Memorial,” its words going up into the sky): Mr Dick must be a distant relative of Tristam Shandy’s my uncle Toby.

Related reading
All OCA Dickens posts (Pinboard)

[As in Laurence Sterne’s novel, it’s “my uncle Toby,” not “uncle Toby.”]