Critics have suggested that "condoled" or "consoled" be substituted for the fable's "cajol'd," but no mss have been found to support such readings. In any case, the moral, that the gold is useless if never used, remains the same.
Cott is an abbreviation for Cotta who, as the second frame's footnote states, is the archetypal miser appearing in a satirical epistle by 18th-century poet Alexander Pope.
