The story
From poetical + justice, coined by the English literary critic Thomas Rymer (c. 1643 – 1713) in the work The Tragedies of the Last Age Consider’d and Examin’d (1678): see the quotation.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
poetical justice
po·et·ic·al jus·ticeToday it means: The idea that in a literary work such as a poem, virtue should be rewarded and vice punished. Full definition →