I am pretty much unread on chess history, and I do believe that Mr.
A.J. Goldsby I's tries to make his websites more sensational than
distinguished, but still I find very interesting these two
observations of his at:

http://www.geocities.com/lifemasteraj/bestplay.html


QUOTE
Elo stated on his excellent book, The Rating's of Chess Players, Past
and Present, that the ONLY way to judge a player was by the standards
of THAT generation. (See section 5.13 on page # 81.)
UNQUOTE

....and

QUOTE
One other thought: While I am on the subject, guess
what happens if you take today's ratings, {April, 2001.}; and play the
"Substitution Game?" ??
(Take Morphy, and give him Kasparov's rating. Take Anderssen and give
him Kramnik's rating. Take Harrwitz and give him Anand's rating. Take
.... well, by now you should get the general idea.)
This does NOT account for inflation, but if Garry Kasparov dominated
his generation the way Morphy did his, Garry would be rated close to
or OVER 3000 ELO!!!! This means that a good comparison for Paul
Morphy would be his ELO rating would be much higher than Fischer's
or even Garry Kasparov's. A little bit of a 'tweaker,' isn't it?
UNQUOTE

I don't know how much evidence we have that Morphy did indeed pass the
Bar exam with perfect score, at the same time memorizing the entire
Louisianna civil code. But still: If all the champions were reborn and
were given a year's time to study modern chess, and then all were
placed on the books in Las Vegas at pick 'em odds... then I would take
a flyer on Morphy.

Once again, I really am not qualified to have an opinion, so I would
be strictly guessing to wager on P.M. like that.

W.H. King