Dr. Mason Fitch Cogswell, author and physician, was a less prominent but nonetheless important member of the Connecticut or Hartford Wits, a group which also included Joel Barlow, Timothy Dwight, David Humphreys, John Trumbull, Theodore Dwight, Dr. Lemuel Hopkins, and Elihu Hubbard Smith. The Connecticut Wits were Yale men, products of a conservative culture, who believed in and promoted the glorification of America, federal principles of government (Barlow was the exception here), and instruction in belles lettres. Modeling their work primarily upon the poetry of Pope, Swift, Gray, Churchill, and Akenside and the prose of Addison and Steele, this group sought to establish a literary canon for the growing country. Cogswell seems to have written much in private; his only verifiable published work is his contribution to the group's series, The Echo, published serially between August 1791 and August 1798.

The youngest of five children born to the Reverend James...