<For my game occurred at the Divan, in London, about 1862 or 1863, and was played against a Mr. Rock, whose name, as usual in case of weak amateurs, was not mentioned when it was published in the Illustrated London News, which had at the time the most widely read chess column all over the world, for it was edited by Staunton, and not by a Duffer. It was afterward also published in Howard Taylor's splendid collection entitled: "Chess Brilliants." Poor Morphy was at the time alive, and nobody dreamt that he intended to give up chess altogether. Yet the game had stood unchallenged for about 20 years, when Reichhelm contributed it to Brentano's as a Morphy game, with a note saying that he believed it occurred, among others, to Steinitz.>

Steinitz says Reichhelm claimed the game came from an old column. Steinitz then continues:

<It was just possible that some enterprising chess editor, who wished to attract the public, did not consider my name good enough for that purpose, and placed the name of Morphy on one of my games. However, now Mr. Reichhelm states that he received the game from "a brother collector." Mr. Eugene B. Cook informs me that he principally assisted Mr. Reichhelm in collecting Morphy's games, but that he was not the one who discovered "the coincidence.">

Steinitz pressed his investigation and from the International Chess Magazine, 1885.06, p175-176:

<...Mr. Cook has discovered, on examining some of his old correspondence, that it was he who sent the Morphy-Evans to Mr. Reichhelm.>

... and further down, p176:

If you check the Opening explorer of Paul Morphy with the White pieces, you can see he played the Evan's gambit a lot more than the King's Gambit.

And also before this game he had some game patterns of using Ba3 to cut the King from casting.

Perhaps it is because it is so easy to play the King's gambit that it gets more profile with more modern players who want to use Romantic era gambits - i think most people do think of the King's gambit as the key one from the Romantic era. Is not the common perception?

For myself I have a big playlist on Youtube for the King's gambit which I used a lot in blitz. Maybe it is easier to market it as it starts just on the 2nd move. I don't tend to actually think as much about the Evan's gambit because the probability of actually getting it on the board is much lower.

Opening Explorer

For Nf6 and White playing Ng5, there is a good counter gambit available for black with d5 and later Na5 which takes the sting out of the Ng5 line.

chessgames.com chessforum (kibitz #36458)

Opening Explorer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evans...

" Eventually however, the second World Chess Champion Emanuel Lasker dealt a heavy blow to the opening with a modern defensive idea: returning the pawn under favourable circumstances."

It seems to me that White is trying to punish a bishop's positioning. The Lasker return pawn idea is trying to punish the punishment in a way because dxe5 is weakening the b6-g1 diagonal.

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. b4 Bxb4 5. c3 Ba5 6. d4 d6 7.Qb3 Qd7 8. dxe5 Bb6 - Black is more than just fine.

The normal cite offered is <Common Sense in Chess>. See pp. 43-44 at link below. In his notes to W Pollock vs Lasker, 1895, Tarrasch sniffed that Lasker usually declined the gambit even though he claimed to know a winning defense to it. So the idea of the defense, and the notion that it was Lasker's, must have been current at the time.

In <Open Gambits> Botterill points out that ...Bb6 had been played before, and said that strictly speaking Lasker's novelty was 10....Nf6.