Swift lived in the age of Anne, when the only men who were not for sale were in jail. The combat was not between heroes and knaves, but between two gangs of knaves. In order to do execution upon one gang he had to work for the other. The dilemma is not unknown in our own time. It makes, alas, for cynicism.
Few books hold up better.
After two hundred years its blistering humors are as fresh as today's witticism. When he printed it at last he was nearing his sixtieth birthday, and the chief struggles of his life were over. There is plain internal evidence that the first part was written, or at least sketched out, a good while before the second. It is very much milder, more good humored, more discreet. A few changes have sufficed to turn it into a favorite story for sucklings.