The late vicar of Tattershall, the Rev. Mortimer Latham, to whose memory the writer would here pay his tribute of regard and respect for as genuine, and withal as genial, an angler as Isaac Walton himself, “knew,” as we might say, “by heart,” the Witham, its finny occupants, and their haunts; and many a fine fish he landed, the shapes of which he kept, cut out in brown paper, in his study. The largest pike he ever took weighed 19½lbs. I have before me, as I write, the paper-cut shape of this fish, lent to me by his daughter; who writes: “It may interest you to know that it was conveyed home in a bolster slip, and was on view in the vicarage courtyard, to the great entertainment of the whole village.” Its length was 38 inches, girth about 21 inches. She further adds: “My father, at one time, caught several tench (now supposed to be extinct in the Witham), and I am proud to say that the last one known to be captured was taken by myself, for being one of the keenest fishermen that even Lincolnshire ever produced, he made us as ardent fisherfolk as himself.” I have also the shape of a perch caught by him, weighing 2½lbs., length 15½ins., girth about 12ins. No fish is so “coy and hard to please” as the pike. Of them may be said, what someone has said of women, If they will, they will, You may depend on’t; And if they won’t, they won’t; And there’s an end on’t. The proverbial “variabile semper” element is their characteristic feature, a living illustration of a line, pregnant with meaning, of Coleridge, Naught may endure but mutability.