Note 180 — V.

It is generally maintained that Maturin’s unpublished manuscripts and his correspondence were destroyed by his son, the Rev. William Maturin, who disapproved of his father’s connection with the stage. This story has, as far as I know, never been definitely proved; it will be remembered that the writer in the Irish Quarterly Review was, in 1852, in a position to communicate several extracts from The Siege of Salerno, which he states to have been found among the manuscripts in question. That Maturin’s correspondence contained, as has sometimes been alleged, letters from Goethe and Balzac, I think very unlikely.—Another son, Edward Maturin, emigrated to America and subsequently published several romances both in prose and verse, which, however, do not evince any traces of his father’s genius.