human
[1533] But this was a matter rather of fashion than of freethought; and there is little trace of critical life in the period. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, doubtless, the aristocracies and the cultured class in the Scandinavian States were influenced like the rest of Europe by the spirit of French freethought, [1534] which everywhere followed the vogue of the French language and literature. Thus we find Gustavus III of Sweden, an ardent admirer of Voltaire, defending him in company, and proposing in 1770, before the death of his father prevented it, to make a pilgrimage to Ferney. [1535] It is without regard to this testimony that Gustavus, who was assassinated, is said to have died
gpt
[1536] He was indeed flighty and changeable, [1537] and after growing up a Voltairean was turned for a year or two into a credulous mystic, the dupe of pseudo-Swedenborgian charlatans; [1538] but there is small sign of religious earnestness in his fashion of making his dying confession. [1539] Claiming at an earlier date to believe more than Joseph II, who in his opinion
human
he makes light of their joint parade of piety at Rome, [1540] and seems to have been at bottom a good deal of an indifferentist. During his reign his influence on literature fostered a measure of the spirit of freethought in belles lettres; and in the poets J. H. Kjellgren and J. M. Bellman (both d. 1795) there is to be seen the effect of the German Aufklärung and the spirit of Voltaire. [1541] Their contemporary, Tomas Thoren, who called himself Torild (d. 1812), though more of an innovator in poetic style than in thought, wrote among other things a pamphlet on The Freedom of the General Intelligence. But Torild's nickname,