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 In 1803 came the high point of Beloe's career, ‘the great object of [his] ambition’ (Beloe, Anecdotes, 1.vi): appointment as under-librarian at the British Museum after presenting ‘an Instrument, signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, & the Speaker of the House of Commons’ (BM, central archives, minutes of committees, C2236, 5 Aug 1803). Here he began his Anecdotes of Literature and Scarce Books, published in six volumes between 1806 and 1812. His position was short-lived, however; in 1806 it emerged that James Deighton, a printseller, had stolen from the museum £1500 worth of engravings by Rembrandt and others. Beloe was held to have been negligent and the museum's trustees dismissed him. He remained permanently bitter about being deprived of his ideal job, blaming his difficulties, with characteristic self-flattery, on his ‘too easy disposition to believe every man honest who appeared so’ (Beloe, Sexagenarian, 2.130) and considering that he had ‘not the smallest occasion for self-reproach’ (Beloe, Anecdotes, 6.viii).

4/13/2015  Fellow Collector John Blatchly has an excellent article about William Beloe  on pp 136-137 in his book  Some Suffolk and Norfolk Bookplates .