Poetic justice

This was a phrase coined by literary critic and historian Thomas Rymer in Tragedies of the Last Age Considered in 1678. For Rymer, ‘poetical’ justice as he put it, where good is rewarded and evil punished, was the ultimate form of justice. Later on, Alexander Pope (1688-1744) in The Dunciad borrowed the expression when he wrote, “Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale, where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs.”