Novelty and originality are great aids to all narration.
There has been for the last two hundred years so little written or known of the English branch of the Sinclair family, that what were simply taken from the various records, authentic and available, ought to have much of those desirable qualities. The Scottish house has had for many centuries the full light of fame over it. The Danish Sinclairs, of whom Sir Andrew, ambassador to James First of England from the king of Denmark, is a prominent figure; the Swedish, known most by Count Malcolm's tragic death returning from his embassy to the Porte during the Czarina Catherine's reign, in the violent time of the “hats and caps”, - Major Sinclair of Carlyle's Frederick the Great; the Norwegian, Russian, and German, remarkable by their literary, civil, and military positions of substance and honour: these are all better to the front than the forgotten Englishmen.
With the Romans it was piety not to neglect the ashes of the fathers. In real generosity of feeling dwellers in these happy islands of the west cannot but be their successful rivals. The dark clouds of antiquity arc over many of our brave actions as a race; but we have not been disrespectful of the past, and the world of writings in our national keeping are unique for their quantity and equality.
There is a notable Irish family of the last two centuries upwards, of whom the Rev. John, girt, with sword and pistols at the siege of Derry, is the hero; and the History of Belfast and Froude's English in Ireland give knowledge of a family of civic and political importance in Ulster's chief town. Recent American, African, and Australian offshoots show the old ability and courage.
Of this, in some respects, too cosmopolitan, though never numerous name, the English representatives can well bear now all the publicity which can be given to them. For the general mind, Sir Walter Scott has done much with regard to those lords of Roslin, who were the princes of Orkney and Shetland, earls of Caithness, dukes of Oldenburgh, and chief nobles of Norway. His verses in The Lay of the Last Minstrel, and his notes to them, about what he well called “the lordly line of high St.Clair”, are of almost over-frequent reference, however much backed by chivalrous and splendid deeds. Even of chains of diamonds the fitful souls would get tired, if too much used.
With a direction to Sir Bernard Burke's no doubt well-grounded enthusiasm about the Scottish family's noble and royal claims and traditions, especially under “Lord Sinclair”, they may be left out of notice. His books alone, if there were not the libraries which are, could keep their memories green. The Vicissitudes of Families may be mentioned in particular as of easy reading and reference.
John Fordun, the old monk of Aberdeen, never felt easy in his mind with a genealogy till he got it to Noah; George Buchanan, the historian, went back through endless paths of Gaelic darkness with his Scot kings; the ingenious and useful, if too superstitious, Matthew Paris, had to get his Henries of England traced somewhere near the flood: our standard authority on peerage, baronetage, and all other rank, has almost laid himself open to the quiz of similar monastic scholasticism in his generous and perhaps scientific reckoning of Sinclair relationship through Scottish, Irish, Norman, Norwegian, and other blood, noble and royal, to the mythological Odin, god, king, and father to all the Dacians.
Of the English Sinclairs he has only a word or two, though they are closely knit with that great Burgh lineage to which he attaches, with evident interest, the northern family on slenderer grounds. Some related families, like the viscounts Gage of Firle Place, Sussex, know that there existed people here of the name; and the antiquaries have a vague suspicion of certain dark figures so yclept moving in the back-chambers of their wonderfully-made memories: but, practically, this is breaking entirely new ground; and with the special interest of such work, there cannot but be the accompanying imperfections.
The strongest arm in art, historic or other, is limited by thousands of chances. Human effort is at its best when sincerity is a sleepless watchman over what ability may come into exercise. To give the proper limits to the imagination where facts are broken and sparse, and also to preserve artistic unity, are a difficult enterprise.