Good bye, Robin

Munro's bookstore on Government Street always has an excellent remainders table and it contributed another inhabitant to my overflowing bookshelf this morning, The Italian Renaissance Reader, edited by Julia Conoway Bondanella and Mark Musa. How could I resist when I encountered lines like this, from Leonardo himself:
There are some who are nothing more than a passage for food and augmentors of excrement and fillers of privies, because through them no other things in the world, nor any good effects, are produced, since nothing but full privies results from them.
Who did he have in mind when he wrote that, I wonder?
Fom Castiglione we have this advice:
You must, therefore, know that there are two means of fighting: one according to the laws, the other with force; the first is proper to the man, the second to the beasts;but because the first, in many cases, is not sufficient, it becomes necessary to have recourse to the second...
Since, then, a prince must know how to make good use of the nature of the beast, he should choose from among the beasts the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot defend itself from traps and the fox cannot protect itself from the wolves...
But the page that would not let me walk out of the store without purchasing the book held these lines of Petrarch:
come quickly now, because death steals away
the best ones first and leaves for the last the worst;
this one, awaited in the kingdom of the gods,
this lovely, mortal thing will pass, not last.
And later today when I learned that my cousin Robin passed away last Saturday, I found in that verse a measure of comfort. His was a gentle soul that could never come to grips with this rough and tumble, deceitful, false world. But Robin, I don't think it was very friendly of you to leave without saying goodbye, considering how I used to have to change your diapers. I love you anyway, little brother, and you will always be in my prayers. Say a good word for me up there. I sure need it. By the way, I know you'll like that quote of Leonardo's.