The term song may therefore be considered in a double sense - if the idea of music prevails, it signifies no more than a set of words calculated for adaptation to a tune: if poetry be the principal object, it is a species of poetical composition regulated by particular laws, and susceptible of a certain definition; still however retaining so much of the musical idea, as to make it an essential circumstance, that by a regularly returning measure it be capable of being set to a tune.
AIKIN, John. . London, 1810.
